Pyke's Place

The Value of Business Process Management

2011-08-03T04:05:00.000-07:00

I’m reverting back to one of my favourite topics for this post. Again it’s been a while since I last came out in public to speak but as I said before I’ve been quite busy getting other things done – seems to take up every waking, and often, non-waking hours – ah well.

I’ve seen some stuff recently that gave me that all too familiar feeling of gloom and doom that despite our best efforts, BPM still has an air of mystique about it – there still seems to be something not quite understood. So in the spirit of trying to simplify things (but probably adding to the confusion) I thought I’d republish an extract from a longer paper that I wrote about 10 years ago – and it goes...

The first vows sworn by two creatures of flesh and blood were made at the foot of a rock that was crumbling to dust; they called as witness to their constancy a heaven which never stays the same for one moment; everything within them and around them was changing…

Oeuvres Romanesques, Denis Diderot (1713-84)

Much management thinking and writing is about entities – things – that are unmoving, unchanging and separate. The reality is that most of what you see around you, whether you can touch it or not, is part of some process or other . It is on its way to being something else. As Diderot suggests, nothing in this world is unchanging.

The processes deployed in all organizations define the culture of that entity, they are what differentiate it from other, seemingly, similar entities – they define the corporate backbone and are, quite simply, the way things get done around here. Needless to say then, they are pretty important and need to be managed and exploited just like any other corporate asset.

One of the most effective ways of exploiting these vital assets is to explore ways of managing them and this is where Business Process Management (BPM) comes into its own. But what exactly is BPM and is the technology hype or reality?

A good deal of the technology that underpins Process Management concepts has its roots in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and stems from the early efforts of the workflow community. So BPM is not new. Business software has long supported major business processes. What has changed is the realization that business managers need to understand and improve those processes. Getting a handle on the myriad processes that exists in all organizations is the easiest way to be more competitive, adaptable, responsive and manage costs. Using process-based software is the key to achieving that.

The success of all this depends on how managers introduce and use this new kind of software. Business Process Management is as much about organizational design, human communication, people’s viewpoints and mutual consideration as it is about technology. It is not just a matter of optimizing computer programs.
There is no doubt in my mind that the deployment of process enabled technology gives organizations a competitive advantage; it does show a return on the investment – it does keep you ahead of the game.

So where exactly do the real benefits come from?

The key area is statistics – or Enterprise Process Analytics.

Organizations now realize that although they can implement BPM without analytics capabilities, they do not have a complete end-to end solution. Their BPM system does not help their strategic planning nor enable them to accurately develop contingency plans for opportunistic and threatening scenarios. They do not have real insight into their processes or the outcomes they produce let alone an automated way of addressing them.

Analytics give business managers and executives the ability to track and measure performance based on real-time feedback of their processes. This gives them real insight into how their organization is operating. Once good and accurate analytics are in place, end users can make informed decisions because they are presented with issues that need to be addressed, as well as with the context so they can take the right action. They have the ability to “drill down” into an anomaly and to look at the information from different dimensions giving them greater understanding of the “information behind the information.” Forecasting is made possible through ongoing statistical data capture, and reporting functions ensure real-time and predictive information is available.

The powerful combination of real-time process analytics and Business Operations Management means that users can:

• Adjust processes to changing business dynamics
• Move from managing business processes to managing business process lifecycles
• Tie together Business objectives, strategic planning, process modeling, workflow, application/content management and analytics so that they interact
• Develop feedback loops for change management and incremental optimization of business processes
• Eliminate gap between strategy and business objectives
• Ensure workflow and processes support key business objectives
• Gain the control of operations to manage process lifecycles from end-to-end

By implementing BPM, the business community is able to build and execute processes that are designed with customers in mind, deliver better quality, faster and at lower costs, and retain competitive advantage by being able to execute processes that deliver the business strategy.

Process enabled Shadow IT

2011-04-27T02:22:00.000-07:00

I was prompted to publish this blog by something I saw in a LinkedIn group (Human Centric Business Process Management (BPM) regarding a concept called “Shadow IT” and the impact that concept has on the development of applications, in particular Situational Applications.

You’ll notice that I didn’t say at the outset “write” the blog and that’s because it is largely ripped off from something I wrote for The Process Factory about 3 years ago – but what I said then is still very relevant and has yet to show its full potential.

The notion of Shadow IT revolves around business users developing their own applications to meet a certain need or situation (hence Situational Applications), It’s no secret that a perennial problem throughout the evolution of software development is being able to empower business users with the required skills to build their own productivity tools yet still maintain all of the governance and control that the business needs.

As long ago as 1982 James Martin (ex-IBM) published a book called Application Development Without Programmers – that suggested, and indeed promoted, the notion that we were about to see the birth of an applications development approach that would, in some way, eliminate the need for programmers or coding. His approach went even further and suggested that these tools could be used by non-programmers – by business users. This was at the time when most computer applications were built on mainframe systems, were batch driven, and still required (in many cases) punched cards for data input.

But his wasn’t the only approach nor was he the only advocate of simplifying application development and making it more accessible and relevant to the business user. Ted Codd, also an IBM employee, came up with the Relational Database (winning the Turing award in 1981for relational database development), and on the back of his invention came a raft of tools such as procedural "fourth generation languages", nonprocedural 4GLs.

Just as we started making good progress towards the goal it all came to a shuddering halt around 1998 when the world caught Y2K and the emphasis shifted to replacing everything with COTS enterprise applications – catering for the end user seemed to drop off of the agenda – IT knew best and was at the height of its power – dictating what the business needed and being too busy to respond to “trivial” requests.

So as we have seen, the idea of end-user computing in the enterprise is not new. However, things have changed – both from a technology basis and business environment. Consider also the dramatic change in tech savvy-ness of anyone coming out of school (the Millenials) these days! Their knowledge and familiarity with web technologies is going to be a major factor in driving the take up of “end user application development” and pushing the concept into the mainstream more than ever before.

So, the combination of (1) the Cloud (no deployment issues), (2) the tools (better than before), (3) the standardized integration methods (much easier to mashup), (4) pricing models which are based around “pay as you go” operational expenditure and (5) the Millenials (better understanding of system building) - taken together, enables us to reach the tipping point where everyday business users will want, and demand, access to technology that will enable them to assemble “applications” on demand. This will undoubtedly have a dramatic impact on the way applications are built and deployed.

One of the main, if not the most important, virtues of taking this approach is the speed at which the applications can be developed and the immediate business payback they deliver when compared with conventional IT development and deployment cycles. The result is an improved ability to respond to or anticipate changing business demands. Also, the organization saves money whenever it changes computerized working methods – usually an expensive and protracted rigmarole. As a bonus, the organization becomes better fitted to exploit future business and computing opportunities, including business process outsourcing (BPO) and Web services.

The downside is that the development is, more often than not, performed in isolation of the corporate needs and may run counter to corporate governance, standards and compliance issues. It therefore can be of limited value in the longer term.

The answer is process enabled Situational Applications.

The idea behind process enablement of Situational Applications is based upon tried and tested technologies in the Workflow and BPM arena. Offering development and application generators as a Service (Software as a Service) business people can create custom Process-based applications to automate manual tasks.

Core to this proposition is the concept of Application Provisioning.

Application Provisioning is basically a mechanism whereby a user can put together an “application” based around his normal working patterns, using readily available services.

This means that it is possible to handle any sort of business problem usually tackled by enterprise solutions. The business user will leverage the capability to associate virtually any number of web services within the context of an application. Application Provisioning is effectively an application generator within a process and is inherently more flexible and more able to comply with corporate guidelines than non-process based approaches.

Why do we need process technologies to deliver this vision?

There are many reasons as to why we need process technology to govern the deployment of Situational Applications and chief among them is compliance.

Situational Applications can be very disruptive and lead to anarchy and a breakdown of corporate governance and compliance. Think of all those Excel spreadsheets – Situational Applications – that are used to run most businesses – no control no compliance no ownership. Process enablement of these types of applications will provide ownership, control and auditablity – making them compliant with the corporate demands without stifling innovation and change.

Furthermore with the high availability of Cloud infrastructure at a low cost and innovative Cloud Services available to accomplish brave new world tasks, the business needs an assembly and orchestration layer in to fully deliver useful business advantages. As a result, the business can become more like the technology:

• More adaptable
• More interwoven
• More specialized

This also sets the business free to mix and match existing processes run on applications like SAP, Oracle, IBM Websphere, MS .Net or even early legacies with processes designed entirely on the Cloud without the need to translate business wishes into a complex requirement specification document. This means that:

• The applications are available to use right away and on demand

• The business avoids capital expenditures almost entirely and ensures that any operational expenditures exists only as a result of a revenue stream

By using process based technology we are able to deliver simple to use service based applications, where, and when they are needed (Situational Applications); effectively deploying the technology as managed services along with all the other services that can be found in today’s organizations.

So instead of buying expensive software licenses and the requisite supporting infrastructure the eventual end users of the applications will access the processes and services they need when they need them - ensuring cost effective deployment and efficient project roll-out. The ICT departments get what they need, the end users get what they need.

Process enabled Situational Applications quickly become the ideal solution for those departments and organizations that need to develop and provision applications quickly and effectively at the lowest cost possible.

What’s the point in Cloud Computing?

2010-09-16T03:13:00.001-07:00

It’s been ages since I managed to put pen to paper and write up a blog, but when you’re head’s down trying to get stuff done and out the door everything else takes second place. Anyway we’re nearly done and the first real public showing of the new product takes place next week in very auspicious surroundings just outside of Paris. There are a couple of hundred CIOs expected to attend so we’re feeling nervous and excited. I’ll let you all know via Twitter how it goes.

Anyway enough of the excuses let’s get down to business. I thought the title would grab your attention: What’s the point in cloud computing?

Everyone’s talking about cloud computing. We think the benefits are well understood and that the impact is real. We’re all using Cloud technologies in the consumer space in one form or another. However, the biggest buzz, is around Enterprise Cloud Computing (or ECC).

ECC is defined as a special case of utilizing cloud computing for competitive advantage through breakout opportunities for both cost savings and, more importantly, for business innovation in terms of unprecedented speed and agility and vastly improved collaboration with business partners and customers.

ECC matters on three levels, and for the sake of clarity, here they are:

1. On the cost side of the equation, many, but not all IT and data centre costs can be reduced and tied directly to usage, up or down as needs go up or down.

2. On the revenue side, risk and start-up expenses for innovation initiatives can be cut dramatically, letting companies take more small bets and test out more new ideas. With no upfront capital expense, new projects can be scaled up instantly if they take off, or shut down quickly if they fail.

3. Companies don’t work alone, and, on average, over 20 companies make up today’s value chains. Cloud computing allows a company to collaborate in new ways with its trading partners, and collaboration is the key to gaining competitive advantage.

Simple and clear enough. Yes? Well No.

If it were that clear and obvious then everyone would be doing it much faster and with more conviction than they are. So what’s stopping the dam from bursting?

The problem seems to be that whilst migrating to the cloud makes sense no one seems to be thinking about the legacy. This is not a green field opportunity as some would have us believe, there’s a mass of investment sitting on PCs and servers that have to go somewhere.

Asking a company to take to the cloud doesn’t make total sense unless we take care of what we have. It doesn’t really cut it if we simply assume that moving our mail services from Notes or Exchange to a cloud alternative delivers us with the benefits that are on offer. Simply moving mail leaves a big void in the argument for moving.
The migration to the cloud needs to include as many of your applications as possible. For example Lotus Notes/Domino. According to a report by the Radicati group there were some 156 million Notes users around the world, and the figure is expected to grow to 199 million by 2013 – on the face of it this suggests the millions won’t be moving to the cloud any time soon – is it because just moving mail leaves thousands of Domino servers humming away in data centers around the world executing the applications? Makes you wonder. Compare that with recent research conducted by Brocade. The results indicate that 60% of organizations expect to have started the planning and migration to a distributed – or Cloud – computing model within the next two years, the key business drivers for doing so are to reduce cost (30%), improve business efficiency (21% and enhance business agility (16%). Something’s not quite adding up.

For the Cloud to deliver on the promise there has to be a way of moving legacy applications from the Client/Server world to this new delivery mechanism. Otherwise it just costs too much to rewrite, retrain, redeploy etc. The benefits will never get delivered.

Just take a peek at www.cimtrek.com to see what’s possible – then call me if you want to find out more.

Doh - Case Management

2010-05-28T04:37:00.000-07:00

What is it with Case Management?

I’ve been suffering from writers block for the past month – when you settle down to build something new and different it takes a lot of focused effort and I must have put that at the back of mind – hence the lack of blogs, reactions to linked-in comments and no involvement on those (often odd) questions posed on ebizq. Ah well – I now think I’ve got everything under control and aiming for a fall release of the first beta – with customers – so that will be cool me thinks – keep watching I promise it’ll be worth it.

So this blog is about things that have amazed me and disappointed me – nothing thus far to make the blood boil – just day to day stuff that crops up when trying to pull things together.

One thing I was very keen to do during the design phase of the product was to find a way of simulating or prototyping the whole thing – I looked high and low for a tool that would let me visualize what I had in my head and get it documented. Someone told me about a product called iRise and if you are into building systems, apps or whatever take a look at this tool. It is absolutely brilliant – I don’t normally advertise products but I will in this instance – in just a few days (5 all in – would have been less save for the slight problem with how it works with Chrome – please fix) I was able to build a working model of the product, produce documentation and show it to people - especially the developers – show and tell has never been so good. If I was handling strategy for iRise I’d be figuring out a way of adding some cort of video capability similar to something like Camtasia. Anyway check it out.

The other thing that struck me this month is the sudden focus and rise in interest in the subject of case management. Now Case Management is not a new phenomena. It is, and always has been, at the heart of many good workflow tools and is, quite frankly, what most customers used to think they were buying when the bought workflow products. The proof points are there to see, Palas Athena, Global360, arguably Singularity, all have long established, well defined proven products for handling case management. And recently I see that IBM have finally woken up to the value of such a tool – and it was this move that really prompted me to write this blog.

I saw a blog entry by Forrester which really made me laugh, and I promise I’m not taking the P%*ss out of them but really what do you expect when you read a comment like:

"The offering is built to solve a business problem. Rather than technology looking for a business need, IBM's case management offering is designed to address a broad issue that exists today. These complex, long running business processes involve numerous stakeholders and span multiple systems, some of which are operational, some content-centric, some collaborative, some analytic, etc. The coordination of the many people and disparate systems offers great opportunity for driving efficiency."

No shit! Isn’t that what all software applications and products are supposed to do? What’s more interesting though is the implied comment that BPM is a technology looking for a business need or am I reading too much into it.

Anyway for the avoidance of any doubt I am delighted that Case is finally, after many years, getting its moment in the sun. But why is Case Management so important? Well BPM is too inflexible for the human aspects of a business process. My first boss in EDP (as it was called) once said to me that computers will do what you tell them, people will always mess you about – and that holds true more today than ever before.

We have to deal with the unexpected. This is not just about using a set of tools to deal with every anticipated business outcome or rule; we are talking about the management of true interaction that takes place between individuals and groups which cannot be predicted or encapsulated beforehand. This is because Business Processes exist at 2 levels—the predictable (the systems) and the un-predictable (the people).

The predictable aspects of the process are easily and well-catered for by BPMS solutions—which is why the term Business Process Management is aruably a misnomer since the perceived technology addresses only the integration aspects—with the close coupling with SOA (SOA needs BPM, the converse is not true) there is an argument for renaming BPM to Services Process Management (SPM).

Understanding that the business processes exist at two levels (the Silicon and the Carbon) takes us a long way towards understanding the need for case management. The key point is to recognize that the unpredictable actions of the carbon components are not ad-hoc processes, nor are they exception handling (ask anyone with a six sigma background about exceptions and you’ll understand very quickly what I mean). This is all about the unstructured interactions between people—in particular knowledge workers. Process based technology that understands the needs of people and supports the inherent “spontaneity” of the human what makes Case Management so vitally important.

Maybe it’s just me or is the emperor going to catch cold in his new suit?

2010-04-06T07:18:00.000-07:00

I’m a big fan of Apple’s technology – I have an array of their stuff ranging from a G5 to store photos, music etc. (though I’m currently hacked off with Apple for suddenly dropping support for the Apple PC chip so I couldn’t upgrade certain products such as Aperture and being told by some idiot in the Apple Store in Regent street that “it was to be expected and I should just accept it”), an Apple TV which I love and various other devices.

One device I really love is the iPhone – it does everything I want it to – I’ve added various apps, have it synching nicely with everything I own and I’m a happy bunny. But I don’t get the iPad. I know that there are all sorts of things I can use it for and you do too no doubt – but I can’t get my head around it being a super new business tool.

On the face of it, it clearly should be – there are all sorts of interesting and useful things we could develop and market – the analyst community is having a field day, informing us as to how it’s going to transform business and the way we do things. For example, George Colony, CEO and founder of Forrester wrote in a recent blog http://blogs.forrester.com/george_colony/10-04-02-beyond_ipad_yadda_yadda that “The iPad signals a fundamental change in software -- and you, as CEO, should know about it.” Now George is a smart guy, most of the time the stuff he writes is informative and useful but I think he’s wide of the mark on this one.

The concept of what he is preaching is on the money; and in my previous blogs I’ve made it very clear that I think the old ways of deploying software and how you pay for it is changing – and it’s changing beyond all recognition and it’s happening very quickly. So I agree with his underlying argument (or maybe he agrees with me – I do love a paradox) – it’s just that I don’t think the iPad 1.0 is the vehicle for delivering this brave new world that we see before us.

Let me tell you why I think this. As far as I can tell, the iPad is little more than an iPhone with a big screen – I’m happy to be told I’m wrong on this – but that’s what I think. So what then can I do with it that I can’t do on my phone?

My first minor niggle is that the iPad doesn’t support multitasking – so what I hear you say – well if you want to run business apps and not have to shut ‘em down when you get interrupted or you want to switch back and forth between “windows” (Apps) you’re going to get frustrated and productivity is going to be impacted. Why would I use an iPad in these circumstances when a netbook PC running browser based applications in the cloud will give me a wider array of options. But this is nothing when compared with my other beef.

The big issue for me is the software and how you get it on to the iPad – this is the bit I can’t really come to terms with or get my head around so I believe that before the iPad has even a snow ball in hells chance of being a serious business tool, this problem needs to be fixed.

In George’s blog he gives a well considered, and realistic, scenario where a device connected to a network could provide a solution to a problem. But he says “On the iPad you don't know or care where the software is running -- the experience is quick, easy, intuitive. And it doesn't depend on the antiquated browser model -- the Wal-Mart application is running over the Internet, but it's not Web browser-based. The Web was really about shuffling pages, not running software.” This is just enthusiasm getting in the way of reality. I don’t believe the iPad is any faster, intuitive, or any of the other adjectives he uses – it’s about the same. But my question is why don’t Wal-Mart care where all this stuff is?

On the iPod and iPhone the App-Store is fantastic – I use it all the time – so do many, many other users – it’s a runaway success. But does this model work for business applications?

Supposing I am Wal-Mart – I build this fantastic application for positioning DVDs in a store – now I want to make it available to the entire enterprise – do I publish it on the App-Store so that everyone can see it and use it. Does Apple now have control of my applications and its distribution – have I opened up all my secrets to the competition – how does this all work? Someone please tell me!

Will Apple’s iconic 1984 TV commercial come back to haunt them?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8

Anyone got anything new?

2010-03-04T02:54:00.000-08:00

In my last post I made one of those comments that you know you will live to regret – in this case “I have a little more time on my hands at the moment”. Silly me, I couldn’t have been more wrong – hence the gap between posts, so sorry about that dear reader. The other point is that I vowed I would only write about things that I find interesting – and recently there’s not been much to spark my interest.

Well something happened only yesterday that made me pick up my keyboard and write – the subject is of course, Gartner’s BPM gig in London.

I got a message from an old friend of mine asking why I wasn’t at the event – and my response was that I wasn’t going to spend money to learn stuff I probably already know. His response shook me a bit – his exact words were “you are right, all vendors look exchangeable, so are many of the speakers” . This made me start thinking back to the last time I attended the Gartner show as an independent (I was a speaker that time as well). At that event I found myself getting quite depressed (as I do when I still get asked about the difference between XPDL and BPMN) about the state of the products and how little the market has moved forward – and in reality how little they have moved forward since the mid 90s. Sure they have new browser based UI’s and better, by that I mean easier to use, integration capabilities but apart from that it would be difficult (though not completely impossible) to find true innovation amongst today’s crop of major products.

For example, take a look at the product marketing and the associated messages. If you were to visit every stand at the event I’m sure you would see some fantastic looking, seemingly well engineered, products that appear to do everything one would expect from a good, robust, Process Support System.

However, I doubt the situation would be as encouraging when you dig a little deeper; I believe that the entire market has commoditized itself. Ask any of the vendors what makes them unique and, frankly, they won’t know. They all say the same – every one of them – so quite how those of you in the market for one of these products decide which one to chose is beyond me.

This state of affairs is a both disappointing and, in a perverse sort of way, very pleasing. Disappointment stems from the very real lack of significant technology innovation during the past 8 to 10 years. However, it was pleasing to confirm that the early vendors of Process Support technology got it right, and just how innovative and forward thinking much of the work labelled as “workflow” had been in the mid to late 90s.

One of the key problems appears to be that the vendors are pushing concepts as purely technology led, an approach which is entirely understandable since that is what they are there to do. The market educators (analysts, consultants etc.) see BPM from an entirely different perspective, they predominately see it is a management philosophy aimed at the business user – a perspective that the product vendors don’t always appear to fully understand.

That’s why, and I’ve said this many times before, BPM is far too important a topic to leave in the hands of product vendors – this is a Business thing – the clue is in the name BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT.

Ask any vendor “what exactly do you do?” and you will get a response that goes something like:

“XYZ Corp. is a leader in BPM and SOA solutions. Our comprehensive BPM Suite provides organizations with a competitive edge by automating, measuring and improving business processes.” Etc. etc. They will talk about the presentation layer, the SOA integration support, analytics, modeling and what have you. This is all good stuff, but also very boring. Furthermore, it doesn’t really tell you anything.

Another viewpoint you may encounter is that you don’t really need a BPMS at all – you can write it yourself. This is, beyond any doubt, a statement of the bleeding obvious and doesn’t help the business understand what this is all about either. Let’s face it, software developers can write more or less anything they like, all the way down the stack to the operating system, but does it make sense to do that?

These opposing viewpoints are understandable but they don’t get us anywhere. The real problem with BPM at the moment is the focus by many vendors on the integration capabilities and approaches such as SOA (which in itself is not new either, it’s just a bunch of software components accessed by a remote procedure call, but that’s another story altogether) rather than the real objectives of making the business more responsive and more agile. When you hear a question like “what comes first SOA or BPM?” then you know something is wrong. The business need drives the process; the process drives the technology need. You need SOA because you want to provide information to a business user at a given point in a business process – not the other way round (which when you think deeply about the problem it’s not worth explaining since it makes no sense).

This fundamental lack of understanding in what constitutes a business process manifests itself in curious and interesting ways. Every vendor believes they are unique but the fact of the matter is many of the software metaphors used in these products were defined by pioneering workflow vendors such as Filenet, Staffware, Plexus and Wang – so setting aside the look and feel of today’s offerings, and some of them do look fantastic, not much has changed in the last 8 or 9 years – indeed, many products appear to have actually gone backwards.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with the products as they stand, what I’m saying is that true, business focused Innovation in the BPM product space is done – the consolidation in the market has put an end to that. Most of the products are indistinguishable from one another.

So I ask you how can so many products offer so little choice?

Want to buy a BPM vendor?

2010-01-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

I have a little more time on my hands at the moment to take stock of what’s going on in the world – or more specifically, the BPM world. Now there’s not much point in observing and not saying anything, so I’ve decided to be a little more topical and regular with the blogs. Which may or may not be a good thing but I’m going to do it anyway.

Those of you that follow the BPM space would have noticed a little flurry of activity in the M&A space, with IBM buying Lombardi and Progress Software acquiring Savvion. I have to say that neither of these moves make any sense to me – I’m sure they do to someone – but I just don’t get it. I’m not in any way criticizing the companies that have been acquired, more power to them, but I am bewildered by the motives and actions of the acquirers.

Setting aside the customer base of Lombardi for a moment, what is it that they have that IBM doesn’t? Couldn’t just be blueprint surely! IBM have enough modeling tools to sink a battleship. I don’t see the maintenance revenue making that much difference to big blue. It can’t be to have a cloud solution – they are building their own offering to cover that – and besides, Lombardi doesn’t do that in any realistic form. So can anyone tell me why IBM bought Lombardi?

So what about Progress and Savvion? Well, on the face of it the acquisition has some merit, it makes a little bit of sense – until that is you look at what Savvion is all about and then try and shoehorn it into the Progress portfolio –it doesn’t fit. The Savvion product is what it is – it’s an old client/server based workflow tool with great aspirations to be a BPM tool. It’s an old product with a clunky UI that still looks like what it was designed to be, a Windows 95 interface. This doesn’t fit with what Progress is saying. In his interview with Progress, Jason Stamper’s blog quotes the CTO as saying "The Savvion BPM suite is a perfect fit for Progress because it offers leading capabilities for business process modeling and execution. The suite also uniquely includes other integrated key capabilities, including business rules management, document management, an event engine and an analytics engine." I don’t know about the rest of you but that doesn’t seem that impressive or unique to me – it’s just another workflow product with “ho hum” capabilities. No real innovation.

Like the IBM/Lombardi deal, this Progress announcement does nothing to further the process management cause. They haven’t acquired anything spectacular, or given themselves any unique capabilities in a tough and crowded market. There’s no cloud vision and no PaaS capability. The Progress stack just becomes more difficult to articulate and install because they now have a workflow engine that sits outside the core platform. The only way I can make this acquisition make sense is that it’s to buy a customer base that MAY provide some sort of upselling opportunities – try as I might, I can’t see any other reason for it.

So where next? Who will stalk Appian or Metastorm. I’m retracting some of my earlier musings on these companies – it wasn’t so long ago when I was saying to someone that the opportunities of being acquired for reasonable money for any of the 4 workflow companies mentioned here had long gone – but I was wrong on that count unless, of course , you don’t consider $49 million to be reasonable money.

So finally, and before anyone takes out their double barrel shotgun and aims it at me, I never quite figured out why Tibco bought Staffware – but it did leave me feeling very happy :)

Looking 2 ways at once

2010-01-08T02:08:00.000-08:00

The passing of 10 years happens every day, so there’s nothing particularly auspicious or special about January 1st. In the grand scheme of things it’s just another day. However, for some reason that remains a mystery to me it is a time for reflections and predictions. So if you will permit me a moments indulgence I will use this juncture time to step into the shoes of the well respected Roman God Janus.

For those of you who don’t know, Janus was an ancient Roman God often associated with doorways and beginnings. His unique capability was that he was able to look to the future and the past at the same time. This is what we need to do now. We are at the doorway of some developments and changes that could have a profound affect on the way we do business, yet many of the technologies and approaches we use are firmly rooted in the past.

It was only ten years ago that we were in the turmoil created by the dot.com boom and the Y2K bug. During the years leading up to the start of the new millennium, over $200 Billion was spent ensuring that planes didn’t fall out of the sky, elevators didn’t stop between floors and the lights stayed on. As midnight struck and we heralded in January 1st 2000 we all sat and waited anxiously to see if the Y2K computer glitch would strike. 2000 dawned and nothing happened. Even though that was the plan, many wondered if the money spent was worthwhile. Was it really needed? To some, the very fact that nothing happened proved that the computer glitches were fixed. The U.S. Commerce Department estimated that the total Y2K cost for the US was of the order of $100 Billion, which was about $365 per person in the United States.
Looking back with perfect hindsight, many now believe that the infrastructure changes that the organisations made for Y2K can be considered a wasted opportunity. As the deadline drew nearer there were fewer issues of what utility a piece of infrastructure had and more of concerns of how would the systems work in the new millennium.

At the same time as we were spending billions of dollars ensuring that the lights stayed on, another event was taking place. The "dot-com bubble". The dot-com bubble covered the period from around 1998 to the end of 2000 or early 2001. Everyone was buzzing about new ways of doing business and as a result, almost any company that had an internet story to tell became hot property. Across the western nations the equity markets kept on rising eventually peaking on the 10th March 2000 when the American NASDAQ equity market hit 5132.52.

At the end of the year 2000 the Y2K bug was long forgotten and investors were licking their wounds following the dot-bomb crash and things started to return to “normal” .

Or did they?

The promise of the dot-com phenomena didn’t go away. As we now know, the internet became the major point of technological innovation during the first decade of the 21st century. But only once the right infrastructure was in place. In 2000 there was no ubiquitous broadband or Wi-Fi – all that was available to most was a bunch of slow dial up lines and millions of modems. Slow and unreliable dial-up networks were the norm until sometime late in 2001 when home-based broadband connectivity began to take over. The always on, always usable, relatively high speed links offered services and access to communications never before seen – the internet society was born and the promise so often touted just a couple of years earlier were now not only possible but available to use.

One industry that has changed dramatically is the music industry. Not so very long ago we were marvelling at the cutting edge technology of Compact Discs (the first test CD was pressed in Hannover, Germany by the Polydor Pressing Operations plant in 1981 ) and by 1989 or 1990 a significant number of music lovers were switching to this new format (by 2001cassettes constituted a mere 4% of the market and have now stopped altogether for pre-recorded music).

The demand for online music almost certainly started with Napster, a music file sharing service created in June 1999 until July 2001. Napster enabled people to freely share files over the Internet; however it quickly ran into major legal trouble. Because most of the music being downloaded was in breach of international copyright laws, it was eventually shut down by court order after several major record labels went after the service.

While Napster and others tried to get around some of the obvious imperatives of the music industry, like paying artists, an established computer company, Apple Inc, went about providing music over the internet in an entirely legal way. The reason Apple did this was not to become a provider of music, but rather to provide a way of getting one of the most revolutionary devices in the music industry to market. The iPod was launched in October 2001 and it became the most popular portable music player since the cassette-based Sony Walkman in the 1980s.

The speed at which these changes are coming about are dramatic; driven by both commercial imperatives and changing attitudes about the use of computer systems.

So what does that mean for the development, supply and use of computer software as we move forward?

You will recall that one of the hot topics during the dot-com boom was the concept of the Application Service Provider (ASP). The simple thought that applications could be hosted on the internet and executed as and when required, on demand. This meant an entirely new business model was required. Instead of paying for software licenses, users would simply pay for the software on a per-use rental basis. The idea didn’t take off, but it didn’t go away either – it had to wait for technology to catch up with the vision.

Now the technology has caught up – but just as importantly - so has the acceptance of the idea that a hosted, on-demand solution is viable and of benefit to business users across the board.

What’s the current buzz? Cloud computing, Application Provisioning and Mass Customization of business services. But rather than repeating what I’ve written before on these three topics, take a look at my other blog posts and white papers to get the details.

In the mean time I shall leave you with the thoughts of Peter Fingar who writes in his book, Dot Cloud: The 21st Century Business Platform Built on Cloud Computing , “As companies adopt SOA to provide standardized services, the value of IT to the overall business mission grows exponentially. Reusable business process fragments (services) can be reused in many contexts and settings—the key is reusable business process segments, not just reusable software. Those reusable process segments can be tapped as companies design innovative business processes as ‘situational’ business processes across multiple business channels. That is, they can be adapted to completely new business situations: new initiatives, campaigns and projects. So it is that software flexibility and reuse enables business process flexibility and reuse. That’s the stuff of business agility in hyper competitive markets of the 21st century.”

I’ve seen the future – it’s called a phone!

2009-12-13T01:20:00.000-08:00

Over the past 18 months or so I’ve been “pounding the boards” around the world giving a presentation entitled “The Cloudy world of IT” (or variations on that theme). Basically the presentation looks at how the cloud is changing the way we view technology especially from the software perspective. Cloud changes, for ever, the software business model that we have known since, well, forever. But I think one of the major impacts is how we build software in the future. Who will ever write a windows application from scratch again? What an outrageous thing to say! How could anyone possibly think that? – it would almost spell the end of Microsoft as we know it!!!

So having spent so long talking about it, what have I been doing to eat my own dog food and practice what I’ve been preaching?

Well quite a lot as it happens. I won’t go into the specifics of The Process Factory (www.theprocessfactory.com) that’s doing its own thing now and needs no further advertising here (except this one) – instead I’m going to focus on the experiences, issues and successes I’ve had.

I can’t think of adjectives big enough to describe how I feel about freeing myself from the bounds of the PC. It’s awesome, brilliant, liberating. And still this doesn’t seem to do justice to how I feel.

It must be like moving from the medieval period to the Renaissance – overnight! In one fell swoop. Seems like hyperbole, but I can’t recall the last time I felt on the verge of a real change since, I don’t know, probably Windows 3.1 so more or less twenty years ago.

So why do I feel so liberated? What have I done?

For starters I switched my “office” environment to the cloud – not all of it, mostly new stuff, but the thing I did go all out for was my email environments. Like most folks I meet and know, I have more than one email account – my work one and the other personal. I’ve always tried as best I could to keep the accounts separate – so that I don’t mix business with pleasure. But the pain of managing my work exchange/blackberry environment for work and my outlook/smart phone (an HTC thing which I detest, thanks BT) was a real pain. If that’s not bad enough, I have a mobileme account for the Mac in my life – it was all getting too much. So I changed it.

All my mail, business and pleasure, is now in the cloud. The shiny new Iphone lets me manage the accounts all on one device, I can share stuff between them, and I can access them from just about anywhere. All the contacts are in one place, as are my calendars, my documents – everything I need. Unless I’m going to present something I just don’t need to take my PC anywhere anymore.

I’ve seen the future of the PC – it’s very simple, it’s very cheap and it’s very secure – it’s called a phone. It may be an Iphone, it may be something from Google, it may be something not yet on the market – but it isn’t a PC. All you will need, for everyday working is a phone in a cradle with a VDA port to a big screen and a wireless keyboard – and that’s it, nothing else. And guess what – I think it’s more secure. I think I would be less alarmed and upset if I lose my phone with no data on it, than I would lose my PC with a life’s work on it. That’s not to say that I will throw out my pc or my non-cloud apps straightaway. But as phones get better and more powerful with more choice, the PC will, inevitably, wither on the vine. So it could be that the last operating systems developed for the PC will of all things be android written by Google - how ironic.

But is it worth the wrench from the confines of the PC to the freedom of the cloud? Well let’s do some math.

Take the UK government as a great place to start – I’m not picking on them – doing anything in the public sector is difficult. But the public sector, probably more than anyone else needs to change the way it operates and it needs to save money.

In the UK the “government sector” (which as far as I know comprises local and central) employs around 6 million people – one person in every 10 works for the public sector in one form or another. Let’s assume that 2/3rds of those people have a PC on their desk – 4 million PCs all running Windows, all using MS Office – you get the picture. It is estimated that the average cost of ownership per PC is £2,300 per annum – that’s around £ 9,200,000,000. A huge sum of money, and don’t ask me why it’s that much because I don’t know and I shudder to think why. By finding some simple way of saving £100 per PC has an impact of £400 million per annum. Getting the annual cost down to an average of £1,000 per PC per annum – well you can do the math.

If all that stuff moved to the cloud – correction – when all that stuff moves to the cloud what will be the average TCO then? £500? £300? Who knows – but I bet it would be a whole lot less than the target of £1,000. That should pay for a couple of hospitals, or extra prisons – or something useful – without adding to the tax burden.

Even the main down side (which I’m sure will be fixed soon enough) has its benefits. The fact that I can’t access some documents or email while I’m on a plane means that I’ve caught up with some great films recently – have you seen “The Taking of Pelham 123”?

Who needs simulation anyway?

2009-11-13T09:21:00.000-08:00

I was searching the web recently and stumbled across a site that explained how to irritate people at work – I thought it was mildly amusing at first then realized it was being serious, so as a result (along with the annoying little pop-ups) I soon became irritated by it (that’s irony BTW). The reason why I bring it up now is that what I’m going to say in this post will irritate many I’m sure.

Those of you who know me, know that I hate simulation tools. Over the years I have spent many hours explaining to people why I have never got excited over process simulation and have never built it into or recommended it for, any of the products I’ve designed or advised on.

So at the risk of alienating a bunch of people here’s why.

The CIO – has the task of making sure the needs of the CEO are fully met quickly, effectively and with zero disruption to the business. Systems implemented in today’s rapidly changing technology world must show fast ROI and bring benefits to the bottom line, without having to discard what works. Which means that good analytics and reporting capability is one of the key, and most visual, benefits that come from implementing a BPM system – the term often used for this is Enterprise Process Analytics?

The majority of Organizations now realize that although they can implement BPM without analytics capabilities, they do not have a complete end-to end solution. Their BPM system does not help their strategic planning nor enable them to accurately develop contingency plans for opportunistic and threatening scenarios. They do not have real insight into their processes or the outcomes they produce let alone an automated way of addressing them.

Analytics give business managers and executives the ability to track and measure performance based on real-time feedback of their processes this gives them real insight into how the organization is operating. Once good and accurate analytics are in place, end users can make informed decisions because they are presented with issues that need to be addressed, as well as with the context so they can take the right action. They have the ability to “drill down” into an anomaly and to look at the information from different dimensions giving them greater understanding of the “information behind the information.” Forecasting is made possible through ongoing statistical data capture, and reporting functions ensure real-time and predictive information is available.

The powerful combination of real-time process analytics and Business Operations Management means that users can:

1. Adjust processes to changing business dynamics
2. Move from managing business processes to managing business process lifecycles
3. Tie together Business objectives, strategic planning, process modeling, workflow, application/content management and analytics so that they interact
4. Develop feedback loops for change management and incremental optimization of business processes
5. Eliminate gap between strategy and business objectives
6. Ensure workflow and processes support key business objectives
7. Gain the control of operations to manage process lifecycles from end-to-end

By implementing BPM, the business community will be able to build and execute processes that are designed with customers in mind, deliver better quality, faster and at lower costs, and retain competitive advantage by being able to execute processes that deliver the business strategy.

So why don’t we need simulation?

First and foremost most proprietary BPM embedded simulation tools cannot simulate the entire business process. At best they simulate the part which has been modelled and automated. They do not take into account the parts of the process which are not forming part of the BPM implementation. Secondly, more often than not, they are “2 dimensional”. What I mean by that is that they do not take into account other processes that are executing in parallel. So the simulation is misleading since it doesn’t take into account availability of the resources required to support it. Without taking into account the impact of other work priorities, other processes in flight, and many other imponderables, the user of the tool does not get a real picture of what would really happen during the process – just a snapshot of a part of the process that is presented in isolation.

And if that’s not reason enough not to trust them – by definition, the data used to drive the simulation is almost always based on guesswork.

So what is the answer?

Simple; using real analytics in real situations is the only way to achieve real continuous improvement.

Simulation tools help sell products – they look good, impress and give the impression of real planning. However, until you have gone through real process discovery, designed the new process, get it agreed and tested they are of very little practical benefit. It is only after you have gone through these stages that you will be ready to use the process in a live environment and then all the outputs of the simulation are little more than historic representation of what we thought would happen rather than what actually happens.

Organic IT – would this work for you?

2009-10-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

Over the past few months I’ve been on the road giving a presentation called “The Cloudy world of Disposable IT”. The presentation is all about the impact the advent of cloud computing is having on the way we build, buy and deploy software applications. These changes are happening very quickly and the ramifications on the entire IT world will be quite profound.

As an example of the way things are going I ask the listeners to consider the runaway success of the Apple AppStore. Its impact is nothing short of phenomenal. Within a year of its launch there were, according to Apple, more than 1 billion downloads and there were over 35,000 applications ready and waiting for iPhone users to access. That’s quite something. There are a few other examples I use to explain how “people power” is affecting the entire world of IT services and how these services are rapidly becoming consumer technology (CT) and Business Technology (BT) but you’ll need to come along to a presentation to learn about those.

However, one thing I’ve found myself talking about is the concept of, what I call, Organic IT. This has nothing to do with the green debate (but it probably impacts it in ways I’ve yet to consider) nor is it to do with not using any form of chemicals to rid the technology of bugs – no – this is to do with living, breathing IT that expands and shrinks as you need it. All this is made possible by cloud computing and is real. What I’m going to tell you can be done as you read this blog, and probably wouldn’t take that much longer to do either – so if you’re sitting comfortably I shall begin.

Imagine for a moment that I’m going to start a new business. Doesn’t matter what type of business, because this would work for any type, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s some sort of “intellectual” business such as a consultancy. The first thing I know I will need (after I’ve done all the tax stuff) is some sort of computer, a way of accessing the internet, some sort of word processing capability and probably a spreadsheet package. I’ve got lots of choices so I decide to make my first port of call the largest retailer for this stuff in the UK, PC World.

As I walk up to the door I get stopped by a mobile broadband vendor who offers me unlimited internet access for £15 per month as long as I enter into an 18 month contract. Well; I know I need access to the internet so I sign up – then he hits me with the bonus – signing up for the 18 months gets me a free laptop computer. Fantastic, I came out expecting to pay £300+ and I’ve got my PC and broadband with no capital outlay. So where next?

I carry on into the store (remember I hadn’t got in there yet) and look around for some office type applications. I look at the obvious choice from Microsoft and think that this is all I need. Until, that is, I look at the price. Small business edition £380 – I need smelling salts. I decide not to buy but go and search on the internet to see what else is available.

So I search, and I find readily available applications to use in the cloud. I can try them out for a while but after that I pay a $1 per week to use it. So I go ahead and sign up. Now I have a PC, Broadband connectivity and office applications, in fact, my entire office in the cloud and I’ve yet to spend any money. But I need more – I need some business support applications like billing and tax returns – is this where I start to spend money?

Spend money? Not me – I search and I find a marketplace where I can subscribe to a platform that will enable me to run little applications as and when I need to. So I subscribe and away I go.

I have everything I need to run my business: The PC, the connectivity, the office applications and the support applications. Not a penny spent from the money borrowed from the bank.

But where does the “Organic IT” come in to this? Well if I can do it for me I can do it for new employees. As my business expands I can take on more IT without spending capital. If I hit hard times and have to reduce numbers I can do that without having lots of expensive hardware and software lying about the place. So my exposure and risk is reduced significantly.

How will this impact the corporate IT world? Well on the face of it you might think “not at all” but think some more. In the future people will not want to own a “company PC” – they will much rather have one device for personal and company use. So corporate IT will be able to source virtual platforms with all the connectivity, applications etc. and load them on to personal computers allowing the employee to switch use as and when.

This means that Corporate IT will not have to buy lots of hardware, nor will they have to maintain it. The real advantage though comes from the fact that all of the corporate data will be held in the organization’s data centre not on an individuals laptop – if a laptop gets lost or stolen – who cares?

There’s no doubt that the way we use and acquire IT is changing – and it’s happening very fast and it’s happening today – be ready!

A disclosure – if you visit http://www.theprocessfactory.com you can start doing this today – simples – as my favourite meerkat Aleksandr might say.

Cloud, BPM, SOA - the real value of on-demand

2009-09-14T02:15:00.000-07:00

The automation of processes is a key enabler of the Cloud phenomena – without process the Cloud remains a passive environment that undoubtedly saves you money and removes some of the operational headaches, but does little else. The Cloud without process cannot deliver on the promise of Business Technology or the Service-Oriented Enterprise. All of the thoughts and ideas around assembling applications quickly to support a business imperative simply wont happen without process technology.

However we need to be very clear – process management in the cloud is not just about BPM Suites on demand. Indeed, the term BPM on Demand is beginning to take on a new meaning when used in conjunction with cloud computing.

The traditional use of the term “BPM on Demand” is often used to describe Software as a Service that delivers a BPM Suite as a Service, much like customer relationship management (CRM) applications are delivered as a service (e.g., Salesforce.com). Both use a pay per usage or subscription pricing model. BPMSaaS provies a full suite of BPM lifecycle capabilities, from modeling to deployment, and on to analysis and optimization. It’s a third party, Cloud hosted alternative to bringing in a BPM Suite in house. But there is much more to BPM on Demand than would at first appear to be the case. If we take the stance that the Cloud can deliver an infinite number of business software Services to all who need them, then we need a mechanism that makes that easy to orchestrate those Services and delivers the maximum flexibility. This is where a new meaning for “Process on Demand” comes in.

Process on Demand means having the capability to call up business Services when needed to change or augment a process that is already being executed.
This capability is in intrinsic part of the Service-Oriented Enterprise. The Services we are talking about are not the usual, fine-grained ones normally associated with the SOA world. These services are far more sophisticated than simple “get data/put data” activities. What we have are Services that contain:

• User Interface
• Business Rules
• Key Performance Indicators
• Meta data

In short, we have everything that makes a self-contained application all wrapped up as a Service that can be incorporated into an end-to-end business process.

Why do I need this type of capability? In a word Simplicity.

The concept of Process on Demand enables you to build dynamic processes that can be changed “on demand” to meet changing business needs. This dynamic process selection provides a substantial improvement in flexibility and agility and reduction in design complexity. But we have to see if those advantages are sufficient enough to achieve the gains in agility, scalability, and robustness to meet the ever changing needs of today’s business environment.

When developing business processes it is quite often very difficult to determine what will ultimately be needed in terms of documentation, sub-processes, timing and dependencies of tasks to accomplish some given requirement. For example, in designing a process to handle an insurance claim for a traffic accident, the analyst may know that the customer will need to get his car assessed for repair and that a payment may or may not be forthcoming, but may not know the types of documentation (e.g., the mechanics costing, police witness reports, and hospital bills) that will potentially be required to process the claim, nor will he or she know the dynamics that determine which one or ones of possibly many documents to use.

These interrelated paths through the claim process may already have been defined by different people, in different parts of the organization as self-contained business Services or sub-processes, and may be changed frequently as the procedures and rules change. In such cases, it is not possible for the main claim process to determine, even dynamically, what particular Services to use. All the developer knows is that a particular goal is to be achieved, but exactly which Service can be used to achieve it cannot be easily determined. Nor, in fact, does the developer really care—he or she simply wants the goal accomplished in an appropriate way.

To solve this problem, we need a repository where we can keep the Services for use by the company. What differentiates these Services from sub-processes or data integration tools is that our Cloud applications know what each Service does, the circumstances in which it can be used, and the goals and outcomes that are required.

This enables us to define which required Services are available “on demand.” By this means, the calling process simply needs to access a Service in the process flow, leaving it to the system to determine which business Service best achieves the goal in a given circumstance. During the execution of the process all those Services that satisfy the goal are known so that on evaluation of a value or the detection of an event, the Service that is required can be incorporated and executed one second before the transaction occurs – making each iteration of the process totally different from and previous or subsequent processes depending on the dynamics in play at the time.

This approach improves significantly the development, agility, and scalability of business processes. The main process is simple, the “happy path,” and is therefore easily understood. New services can be added or removed without any change whatsoever to the calling process or processes. So Process on Demand provides a simple and effective way of defining processes that completely encapsulate their definition in self-contained, semantically complete business Services, significantly increasing agility and scalability as a side effect.

This is the real power of BPM, SOA and the Cloud.

There will be more on this subject in a new book from Fingar, Mulholland and yours truly :)

What goes around comes around

2009-08-14T04:42:00.000-07:00

I’ve just returned from the annual pilgrimage to the south of Europe to soak up the sun, relax with the family and practice my swimming techniques that I had learnt anew 12 months earlier. I came back looking like a half broiled lobster, 6 pounds heavier than when I left to face a stack of work that had built up while I was away. Does all this sound familiar?

Like countless others, one of the things I like to do when on holiday is read. I read anything and everything, from the normal holiday stuff by the likes of Grisham through to Tudor history from Starkey. There are times when I have up to 4 books on the go at any one time. I read to relax and educate – I immerse myself and chill out.

This year was different, not through choice I might add, but simply because of one of the books I decided to take with me. The horrid little tome that messed things up is a fairly old book. One which I was certain I had read before and enjoyed so the plan was to “refresh” my understanding of it. Also the copy I was given was a revised version – an “old” updated version – bringing everything bang up to date as of 1996.

What is the book that’s the subject of this piece? It goes by the title “Accidental Empires” by Robert X. Cringley (the subtitle’s good as well it’s “How the boys of Silicon Valley make their millions, battle foreign competition, and still can’t get a date”) – it’s a great book. But before we go any further here’s a short disclaimer. When I sat down to write this blog, I decided not to do any research on what the Cringley machine has written since the revised edition of the book was published (1996). That may seem strange but there’s good reason (at least in my mind).

So if I like the book so much, why then did it mess up my vacation? Well, as I said I like to read to relax, but all I kept doing was rereading passages and making copious notes to myself – I didn’t complete another book – just kept going over and over various bits to get the arguments and ideas straight in my mind. All the while with a view to write this blog because it was still so relevant, still able to teach us lessons.

For those of you who don’t know this book, it describes the birth of the PC industry, exploding myths and revealing interesting personality traits of those we’ve come to know and love over the years. Cringley tells us how it all happened more or less by accident. The people who made it happen were amateurs and that for the most part (at least in the early 90’s) still are.

Now for those of you who know me, you already understand where I’m coming from – I’m passionate about two things outside of my family and they are history and technology – so when they combine I’m in my element. History has a habit of repeating itself – we ignore the past at our peril – and that’s what got me this time.

In 2009, the world of IT is changing – and, at the risk of being shot as a heretic, the era of the PC as we’ve known it over the past 3 decades is coming to an end. The new IT paradigm is the cloud. But reading Cringely’s book one would be forgiven for thinking that he is describing what is happening in the world today.

Accept for a moment that the cloud offers a new computing platform upon which to develop applications. To take advantage of this new environment major software vendors are taking their existing products and trying to make them “cloud enabled” – this is a bad idea.

Why so?

Well let’s take an example from Cringley in the 80s. The application that made the Apple II so successful was Visicalc. Visicalc was the killer application and was responsible for the sale of millions of Apples. It wasn’t the hardware, it was the software – written for the specific piece of kit then ported to other platforms. For example, Westinghouse in Pittsburgh had decided that the Apple II wasn’t suitable for their use and yet business users had collectively bought 1,000 of the things just to run Visicalc. So why don’t we still use Visicalc today? After all, hardware may appear to get slower and die, but software remains in the same pristine shape it was in when first installed.

Well along came the IBM PC with a new operating system, new chip set, new everything. The simple answer was to “port” Visicalc to the new environment; take an “old” product and revamp it for a new environment. There’s a problem with this approach – you never get the same “intimacy” with the hardware, which means that performance is degraded, code becomes more fragmented, harder to understand and more expensive to maintain. This is where the genius of folks such as Mitch Kapor comes into play. Kapor is the father of Lotus, specifically Lotus 123. He started what became one of the fastest growing software companies ever – at one stage Lotus was the largest software company in the world. But Kapor didn’t invent the spreadsheet – his genius was to realise that the IBM PC represented a new computing platform – so he bet his house on making it happen and developed a “new” “killer” application for the PC.

What Kapor recognized is true today, it’s true for the cloud. Some of the best known products in the market today are just not suitable for cloud deployment. Porting them isn’t going to hack it either. The cloud demands a new breed of technology – written from the ground up to support multi-tenancy, to be accessible from anywhere, have good connectivity to the “old” world and provide a solid platform-as-a-service.

There are lots more examples and I would urge you to go and get a copy of the book and read it in schizophrenic mode – from an historical perspective and a “it’s happening again” one. Also a plea to Cringely – bring the book up to date you were right then and still are today.

To conclude I want to tell you about the extra couple of chapters that constitute the 1996 edition. Cringley makes a stab at predicting the future and in doing so introduces “I” word; the internet. He makes two points:

1. “…the internet topology is most often described as a cloud. Packets of data enter the cloud in one place and leave it in another…”
2. “…a set top device is not a computer because it has no software applications and no local storage, right? Wrong. The set top device will be connected to a network, and at the other end of the network will be companies that will be happy to download spreadsheet code as they are to send you a copy of gone with the wind…there goes the PC business…also unnecessary owning your own software since it’s cheaper to rent”

Cringley also says that these ideas take 10 to 15 years to come to fruition – it’s 13years since he wrote that.

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?

2009-07-19T03:35:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I remember reading (or hearing, I can’t quite remember which) a comment by Bill Gates about who he feared the most as a competitor. His response was interesting and probably one of the most insightful things I’d every heard attributed to him. What he said was something like (and I can’t find the actual quote so can’t cite it) the competitor he worried most about was two kids in a garage. Now he just might have been spot on in his thinking.

Let me tell you a story…

Once upon a time there were three little pigs. One day, the time came for them to leave home and seek their fortunes and make lives and families for themselves. Before they left, their mother told them “Whatever you do, do it the best that you can because that's the way to get along in the world and make mountains of cash” So the pigs set off and started to make lives of their own.

Task number one for each of the pigs was to build a solid reliable business that would secure their futures and they would never have to worry again. But building businesses is not as easy as it looks – you need the right strategy, the right product and the right skills – nothing happens by chance.

The first little pig was called Larry Lotus. Larry decided to build a house out of straw and he proudly named it Chez Lotus Development Corp. The basic building blocks were a pile of home grown and bought in Office Productivity tools (loosely glued together and called Lotus SmartSuite). Larry did this because at the time it was the smart thing to do, and no one else had such a thing. Larry’s approach looked like a sound and sensible strategy.

The second little pig built his house out of sticks. His name was Nigel Netscape. Nigel also had a unique capability and one which seemed unassailable. There were those that thought this house was a little stronger than the one made from straw but looks can be deceiving as we shall see. The other problem for Nigel was called the business model – no one had really figured out how to make money from the pile of sticks Nigel had – how could the house weather any storm?

The third little pig built his house out of bricks – we’ll come back to this little pig a bit later after we take a look at what the wolf (who went by the alias of Bill) did to the other pigs.

One night the big bad wolf, who dearly loved to eat fat little piggies, came along and saw the first little pig in his house of straw. He said "Let me in, Let me in, little pig or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in!" "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin", said the little pig. But of course the wolf did blow the house in and ate the first little pig.

The wolf then came to the house of sticks. "Let me in Let me in little pig or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in" "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin", said the little pig. But the wolf blew that house in too, and ate the second little pig. But there was some indigestion and the wolf was almost decapitated – but all was soon well.

The wolf then came to the house of bricks and walked right passed it. There was nothing in this house remotely interesting to him so he let it be. The pig flourished, built up some healthy ways of making money and began to plant new things in the garden – now the wolf began to take notice.

One night the wolf returned to the brick house -" Let me in , let me in" cried the wolf "Or I'll huff and I'll puff till I blow your house in" "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin" said the pig.

Well, the wolf huffed and puffed but he could not blow down that brick house. But the wolf was a sly old wolf and he climbed up on the roof to look for a way into the brick house.

The little pig saw the wolf climb up on the roof, so he lit a roaring fire in the fireplace and placed on it a large kettle of water. When the wolf finally found the hole in the chimney he crawled down and KERSPLASH – he fell right into that kettle of water and that was the end of the pig’s troubles with the big bad wolf.

This little Pig’s name is Gary Google.

So, were did the wolf go wrong? While the Wolf was hunting around for new pigs to eat, a revolution was taking place under his very nose but he just couldn’t see it. The clouds were gathering and Gary was making some neat new stuff to take advantage of it. What stuff? Chrome, Chrome OS, App Server, the recent release of non-beta Google Apps, Secure Data link, Android, and there’s probably more that I’ve forgotten to mention. But you see the point.

So to remind a senior executive what he said about Gary’s company “that’s not a real company it’s a house of Cards”.

Well it’s starting to look very much like a house of bricks to me and the two kids in the garage have done rather well from where I sit. Sorry big bad Wolf you missed your opportunity big time!

But wait! Is that an apple I see in Gary’s mouth?

Standard Case management

2009-07-06T08:19:00.000-07:00

The human being always looks down when he is examining another person's standard; he never finds one that he has to examine by looking up.Mark Twain - What Is Man?

As many of you who have followed my rants and occasional blogs through the years are aware, I have always considered the idea of case management to be an intrinsic part of the technology that we now call Business Process Management. So it should come as no surprise that I have been an active supporter of the efforts of Henk de Man of Cordys to put together an RFP for the Object Management Group. What Henk has defined makes absolute sense to me. The RFP essentially says that BPMN is inadequate for case management but that case management should leverage BPMN for the "process" part. Since the two “technologies” (Case Management and Process Management) are, in my view, inextricably linked, how I could not agree with Henk’s arguments. It’s not just me who’s saying this is the right thing to do; Bruce Silver’s excellent blog on Henk’s work (probably for the first time in history, I agree completely with what Bruce has to say) means that I don’t have to write anything more on case management in this paper though you may want to take a look at previous blogs I’ve written here and here to see how important I believe the subject is.

So that’s OK then – someone has taken the initiative to put something together that is going to help bring case management to the fore and give it its rightful place in the “BPM Stack”.

No – nothing’s ever that easy.

There seems to be 2 issues that stemmed from the proposal, and for the sake of clarity I was not at the meeting, so much of what comes next is hearsay, however the information comes from a trusted source that was present at the meeting.

First and foremost is the usual OMG dilemma – conflicting standards supporters whishing to protect their own turf – in other words, which group wants to “own” the standard. This was beautifully illustrated by none other than that well known advocate of industry standards IBM. During the debate on the standards (which would normally culminate in a vote) IBM seemed to be at odds with itself (always a potential issue if you have more than one person representing an organization at a standards meeting) in trying to decide what to base the potential case management specification. Should it be UML, or BPMN? Or should a separate and independent meta-model be proposed? This suggests a fundamental problem within the OMG, the perceived competition between UML and BPMN. The BPMN folks want to use “new BPMN extension mechanisms” to define the case management meta-model (which sounds tricky to me) whereas the “UML supporters thought it obvious that case management has to be data-driven, and that it requires state machine, therefore would have to be UML-based. Poor Henk, having taken the initiative to propose a standard he was immediately faced with the realities of getting things understood let alone moving forward.

It’s easy to see and understand the dilemmas organizations like the OMG are faced with (and having been involved in the standards world for the past 14 or so years I’ve sat through endless, unresolved, debates myself) but these things are simply a fact of life. However things have started moving and even though organizations such as SAP and IBM were a little late in recognizing the case management business case and standardization initiative. There is growing support and recognition of the value of this initiative, there is no doubt that the proposal is going to be debated and supported.

The small issue of late recognition has led to an unfortunate delay of a further three months is unfortunate but given the fact that case management is now broadly recognized as a viable and much needed addition, I hope that the expected release of the RFP will go smoothly in September.

The second issue is more of a problem and needs to be voiced.

One of the things one needs to do when trying to gain support for a standards proposal is to lobby as many folks as possible to ensure they understand the need, the objectives and the benefits from putting a standard in place. So it’s all about garnering support and not getting sides swiped or torpedoed either intentionally or otherwise. But it does happen and it’s always disappointing when it seems that it is done intentionally, by people that didn’t actually attend the meeting.

As Bruce Silver says in his blog (see above) “a major problem with case management is that there is no common definition for what it is. I would assert you could say the same thing about BPM until BPMN provided a standard vocabulary.” So why would anyone want to halt the development of a standard because it is too early, when clearly the earlier we can get some sort of standard notation in place will be for the benefit of all. If we accept that the technology has been around for a while we have to conclude that it’s hardly set the world on fire, even though I firmly believe that workflow automation and case management are different sides of the same coin and go hand in glove. I would even suggest that a large proportion of workflow users thought they were buying case when they started out. So the line of thinking that suggests standards are in some way too early or will stifle innovation in the advancement makes no sense to me whatsoever, especially when the thinking is coming from the analyst/consulting side of the industry!

Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against the analyst or consulting community, they do an excellent and very valuable job, but they don’t build products. Now I know that some will take issue with that but they don’t. That’s not to say that some have not been in the vanguard of product development at some stage in their careers. Indeed, some of my favorite sparring partners are were once chief architects and/or CTO’s from product companies, but they don’t build them anymore. As I say, analysts and consultants do an excellent job of commenting upon products or suggesting ways to take them to market or advising on market trends. I don’t see them as vehicles for developing standards, and I certainly do not see any value in trying to scupper the development of standards for “wooly” and ill-defined reasons.

A technology that’s been around since the late 80s and early 90s could certainly use some help from the likes of us that are supposedly in the know. It’s not too early to put the ideas under the spotlight and bring them to the front so that Case Management can get its time in the sun.

My plea is that we not take every opportunity to derail things just because it suggestions might be at odds with an individual’s original thinking.

If you want to make a real difference, build a product.

The man who saved the world

2009-06-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

I’m warming to the theme of these underdog blog posts – unsung heroes. People who have made a significant, yet largely overlooked contribution to the world of information technology. The previous post of this type was singing the praises of a real pioneer in the development of software; this time I’m going to focus on the development of hardware. But before I tell you about this individual I need to address a delicate, possibly controversial, subject.

Who was it that invented the programmable digital computer?

Everyone knows the answer to that, or at least they think they do. The popular perception is that the programmable computer was invented in 1946, by John Mauchly and J Presper Eckert, as part of a project they were working on at the university of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering. They called their new invention the ENIAC I (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator). From this unquestionably pioneering work, the two went on to found Univac, a computer manufacturing company that eventually became today’s Unisys corporation. So that’s who invented the first programmable computer – right? Wrong:

Wrong; wrong; wrong.

This may come as a shock to many, but it’s time to set the record straight (and not for the first time) – the myth that we have heard over the years about Eniac is just plain wrong, untrue, dare a I say it? A fantasy. The Eniac was not the first programmable computer. All that we have heard in the past from Univac, and various other interested parties, is no more than marketing bunkum. So if Eniac is not the answer then what was the first programmable computer and who was responsible for its birth?

Colossus was; plain and simple.

The following is a potted history of its birth. But the real story is about the man that invented it; the humble, quietly spoken, genius from the U.K. The man that may just have saved the free world from countless deaths and a reign of tyranny.

Allow me to introduce you to Tommy Flowers MBE. Tommy Flowers (or to give him his full name Thomas Harold Flowers) was born in the east end of London at the end of 1905 to ordinary working class parents (his father was a builder). When he left school (which in those days was at the age of 14) Tommy became an apprentice Mechanical Engineer at the Royal Arsenal, but while he was learning his trade, he took himself off to evening classes and earned a degree in the relatively new science of electrical engineering.

Soon after graduating, Tommy joined the telecommunications branch of the General Post Office (many years later it was privatised and renamed British Telecom) as a research scientist at the Dollis Hill research station in North London. From about 1935 onwards, his major research interest was the problem of transmitting control signals over long distances, thereby enabling human operators to be replaced by automatic switching equipment. This resulted in his experiments with early electronic systems that would form the basis not only for Colossus, but also for advanced long-distance telephone systems that developed into modern direct dialling.

Tommy’s research was interrupted by the outbreak of World War 2. This meant that all civil work in Britain had to be subordinated to war work. In 1942 Tommy was sent to Bletchley Park, where he met Alan Turing (a brilliant mathematician and a leading figure in the activities taking place in Bletchley) – this meeting ultimately resulted in Tommy becoming involved in top-secret code breaking activities and the development of Colossus.

Tommy’s own account of the development of Colossus is written up here. But the extraordinary thing he tells us is “That Colossus occurred at all was the result of a series of lucky chances to which one more is added if because of it I am to be numbered among the computer pioneers. At the time I had no thought or knowledge of computers in the modern sense, and had never heard the term used except to describe somebody who did calculations on a desk machine.”

Tommy and his team designed and built (for the most part with their own money) the first Colossus machine in 11 months. It contained 12,000 vacuum valves, didn’t store any data and was programmed through external use of telephone plugs and cord connections. But it did the job that was asked of it and it did it accurately and quickly.

Before the end of the war a total of 10 machines had been built and commissioned. Their contribution, and that of Tommy’s, in shortening the duration of World War 2 is unquestionable. Tommy’s own conclusion was “Although the final outcome of the war would no doubt have been the same, its history might have been different with greater loss of life and damage”

After the War, Tommy returned to his “day job” at the Post Office. The then prime minister, Winston Churchill, ordered the destruction of all Colossus machines and accompanying documentation. The work of the pioneers at Bletchley Park was covered by the official secrets act, so the work of people like Tommy went unrecognized for over 30 years.

He did receive some recognition for his efforts. He was awarded an MBE by a grateful nation and a “prize” of £1,000 at the end of the war. However, I doubt this covered his expenses since he built the first machine from his own pocket.

Colossus undoubtedly made a contribution to the development of computers in Britain by showing Turing, Newman, and others what electronics could do and that knowledge turned their minds to computers immediately after the war. Tommy more or less turned his back on computers and concentrated on his first love, telephone exchanges. In 1946 he solved the problem he’d encountered back in the late 30s when he discovered that what was needed to make electronic exchanges economic was time-division multiplexing, but no practical use was made of the discovery until after he had retired – but that, as they say, is another story.

Tommy died in 1998 at the age of 92. He’s my number one Hardware engineer.

So now you know – Eniac – pah!

Additional Reading http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TommyFlowers
http://www.acsa2000.net/a_computer_saved_the_world.htm

It's the process stupid

2009-06-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

“We can’t solve today’s problems using same kind of thinking we used to create them.” Albert Einstein – how true!

At the end of 2006 I wrote a paper, and related blog which became known as the “Workflow Sucks” paper. I had reason to revisit the paper recently and it started me thinking about how things have changed in the past couple of years and what impact that has had on the “BPM” industry. My feeling was that I needed to revise the paper and start to review and reconsider some of the things I had said at that time.

Back then I tried to clear up a few “misunderstandings” by reiterating the fact that Business Process Management had its roots in Workflow technology and that many of the leading products were (and are), in fact, evolutions of the original forms processing packages. So there was no longer a need to debate what had become a moot point.

But the fact that most Workflow products were flawed, was, and still is, an issue – and is essentially why workflow never took off as many of us had predicted. The fact that most of the “market leading” BPM products have their origins in workflow ensured that the inherent problem in the gene pool rippled through to the new BPM species. So what was wrong with workflow? It's quite simple, the processes are too rigid.

Processes have to deal with the unexpected. This is not just about using a set of tools to deal with every anticipated business outcome or rule; we are talking about the management of true interaction that takes place between individuals and groups which cannot be predicted or encapsulated beforehand. This is because Business Processes exist at two levels - the predictable (the systems) and the un-predictable (the people).

Understanding the business processes exist at two levels (the Silicon and the Carbon) takes us a long way towards understanding how we solve this problem. The key point is to recognize that the unpredictable actions of the carbon components are not ad-hoc processes, nor are they exception handling. This is all about the unstructured interactions between people - in particular, knowledge workers. These unstructured and unpredictable interactions can, and do, take place all the time - and it's getting worse! The advent of Web 2.0, social computing, SaaS etc. etc., are already having, and will continue to have, a profound effect on the way we manage and do business.

My thinking at the time centered around what I called "Knowledge Intensive Business Processes" or KIBPM. KIBPM is, essentially Case Management – and my assertions at the time still hold true but things have happened, things have changed.

The Credit Crunch happened, the global recession happened, the cloud happened, globalization happened and the prefect storm happened. All bets were off!

These events are having, and will continue to have, a profound impact on the way we conduct business. But the particular “change” I want to look at here is the advent of the cloud and how Business Process Management will make the cloud a viable business tool.

The advent of cloud computing could have a greater impact on business use of IT than the PC revolution did in the 1980s. The flexibility and potential cost savings of using applications accessed via the web will fuel adoption across the board. There will be many ways in which the cloud will change businesses and the economy, most of them hard to predict, but one theme is already emerging. Businesses are becoming more like the technology itself: more adaptable, more interwoven and more specialized.

Furthermore, the take up of the cloud is going to have a profound effect on the way IT departments are accounted for. More and more of the expenditure will be seen as variable costs as we shift from a buy and own model to a pay as you go – and a shift from capital expenditure to operational expenditure. This will also drive down the overall costs to the organization and make IT much more like a managed sevices provider. Furthermore, as we witness the inevitable drive to the cloud more business users will turn directly to on-demand cloud solutions to satisfy their IT needs. As a result IT’s dominance as the technology provider will reduce.

So what does it mean? – it means that it’s all about business services delivered on demand to the right place at the right time at the right cost. There will be an ever diminishing requirement for business users to fund the purchase and deployment of large enterprise applications – they will take specific services to do specific tasks when required.

This provides the business with improved ability to respond to or anticipate changing business demands and as a bonus, the organization becomes better fitted to exploit future business and computing opportunities. The downside is that the development is, more often than not, performed in isolation of the corporate needs and may run counter to corporate governance, standards and compliance issues. It therefore can be of limited value in the longer term.

This is where process technology will play a significant role. User driven development can be very disruptive and lead to anarchy. No control, no compliance, no ownership. Process enablement of cloud service will provide ownership, control and auditablity – making them compliant with the corporate demands without stifling innovation and change. This also sets the business free to mix and match existing premised-based applications like SAP, Oracle, and even early legacies with processes designed and run entirely on the cloud.

So instead of buying expensive software licenses and the requisite supporting infrastructure the eventual end users of the applications will access the processes and services they need when they need them - ensuring cost effective deployment and efficient project roll-out. The IT departments get what they need, the end users get what they need.

Process enabled cloud services will quickly become the ideal solution for those departments and organizations that need to develop and provision applications quickly and effectively at the lowest cost possible.

So does workflow still suck? Yep – for all the reasons given in the past, but it’s the only way we are going to be able to use the cloud for sustainable business advantage.

Unsung Hero? JCR Licklider (1915-1990)

2009-06-10T08:19:00.000-07:00

I’ve been very encouraged by the reactions I’ve had to the first Blog post so thanks for the feedback. With that encouragement ringing in my ears I’m going to have another go. You never know but this could become a regular, though not predictable, occurrence. I’ve made a vow to myself that I will only Blog when I have something to say rather than push out a load of pointless content based on what others are saying.

By the way, I have the same view of Twitter – I’ve taken to making two twits (is that what they are called?) every day. One on a point of history, because outside of the world of IT that’s my favourite subject (English 16th and 17th Century up until the time of the Dutch takeover in 1688) and also anything remotely interesting in the IT space. Goodness knows what the people following the Twits I post must think (perhaps that’s why they are called Twits) but that’s their problem I guess.

When I sat down to compose this Blog I was going to write about the next big thing in BPM advancement, based on a paper I wrote back in 2006 that became known as the “why workflow sucks” paper (here). However, before getting stuck into the serious business of writing, I decided to flick through the Sunday Papers, when a picture of someone I recognized from an old book caught my eye. Needless to say I started to read the associated article (well paragraph really, which was wedged between a picture of the real Crocodile Dundee and a story suggesting that Gustave Eiffel invented the suspender belt). I became intrigued enough to start thinking about writing something completely different to what I had intended, and yet fitting it in as a sort of sequel to my previous Blog on Xerox Parc.

What had caught my eye, and started me Googling like fury, was a short article that appeared in the British Sunday Times (7th June 09). The piece was simply titled Unsung Hero and was about a guy called Joseph Licklider. Now be honest, how many of you recognise that name? Have you ever heard of this guy? I have to be teacher’s pet here and own up to having heard the name (don’t forget I like History) but I had forgotten all about him and the amazing things he has contributed to our everyday lives.

For those of you who are keen and eager to learn more, let me put you out of your suspense. Joseph Licklider is directly responsible for all this stuff we use today to conduct on-line commerce, play games, communicate with our friends, watch movies and listen to music, and a million more things besides.

This guy came up with the one thing that Xerox Parc forgot to do, he conceived the idea that became the internet.

In 1959, Licklider wrote his first influential book, titled "Libraries of the Future", about how a computer could provide an automated library with simultaneous remote use by many different people through access to a common database – let me restate the date 1959 that’s 50 years ago.

In 1960, 29 years before the internet Lick (as he was known) postulated the theory of a network of thinking centres connected together by wide band communication lines. In 1965, still on the same theme, he suggested that people might use the system to “access everyday business and professional information”. His 1968 paper on The Computer as a Communication Device predicts the use of computer networks to support communities of common interest and collaboration without regard to location.

How visionary was that?

His ideas and writings led to the development of Arpanet the direct forerunner of what we commonly call the internet; and if that’s not enough; in 1968, Licklider became director of Project MAC at MIT and a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. Under his guidance MIT produced the first computer time-sharing system and one of the first online setups with the development of Multics (work on which commenced in 1964). Multics was the direct ancestor of the Unix operating system developed at Bell Labs in 1970.

According to Wikipedia, he has been called "computing's Johnny Appleseed" for having planted the seeds of computing in the digital age.

Licklider was instrumental in conceiving, funding and managing the research that led to modern personal computers and the Internet. His seminal paper on Man-Computer Symbiosis foreshadowed interactive computing, and he went on to fund early efforts in time-sharing and application development. He even bought the very first computer (probably serial number 1) built by the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) the PDP1.

Licklider was a very humble and modest individual who died in 1990 long before any of his visions or thoughts became the all pervasive, ubiquitous internet and World Wide Web.

In 1990 he received the Massachusetts Common Wealth Award for Distinguished Service but I can’t say if that was posthumously or if it was just before his death. Either way it seems to me that it was long overdue and probably a lot less than what he should have got, especially when you consider Tim Berners-Lee received a knighthood from the British Government for inventing hyperlinks!

Licklider is a real unsung hero of the IT industry; right up there with the greats of Information Technology thinking. If there was a hall of fame that was based purely on innovation rather than straight commercial success, Licklider would be my number one.

Perhaps we need an on-line campaign to ensure he gets the recognition he fully deserves.

Now who would be at number 2?

Speak soon

Who invented everything?

2009-06-06T07:12:00.000-07:00

For quite some time now, a number of individuals have been suggesting that I really ought to start blogging – and up until now I’ve been resisting. Why? Lazy mainly J Sure I contribute as a guest blogger on a number of sites, I write white papers, I’ve been know to contribute to the occasional book, and from time to time I allow my natural timidity and shyness to be overcome so that I can deliver thought provoking presentations.

So I do a fair bit and one of the key concerns I’ve always had is being able to be consistent, interesting and relevant. I believe that if I can’t maintain a certain standard – one I’m happy with, I will do less and less or stop altogether – so let’s look on this is a bit of an experiment – see if we like each other and see if it’s worth spending the time.

One thing you should know as a reader – I am passionate about the world of IT, and in particular all things process centric - from workflow to BPM. Some of the stuff you see in products today I invented, some of the things in products I’ve been responsible for I’ve borrowed but it’s all been to the good of trying to build a sustainable BPM market. The other thing I’m really excited about is cloud computing – this will be a theme I will return to on a regular basis because I think I have quite a bit to say on this subject. Finally I’m passionate about Cordys and the Cordys Process Factory – this is special and unique stuff and it has been built by some very talented individuals and I’m proud to be associated with them.

But I want to use this blog for other things (though make no mistake I will write about the things I mentioned above on a regular basis) and it is for this reason that I’ve decided to separate my Blogging from my day to day work.

And this is where I want to start – on a subject not directly related to Cloud or BPM.

I had occasion last week to sit back and ponder the development of the world we live in – not from any deep philosophical point of view but just the way the world of information technology has developed over the 30 years or so I’ve been involved in it. Who really invented all this stuff? Who made it all possible? Who dreamed it all up?

I wasn’t prompted to start thinking about this by a deep desire to know – I already know – what prompted me was a conversation with a (much) younger colleague. He slapped me on the shoulder (which almost provoked a similar response, but to the mouth) and said something along the lines of “Jon I heard the funniest thing” peels of laughter “someone said to me that Xerox had invented the iPhone” – suddenly he stopped laughing – I guess because I didn’t find it that funny – he looked at me and said “you can’t believe that story can you? I mean Xerox? what did they ever do? – they just made photocopiers right”

I thought about his comments for a few moments then decided to sit him down and explain in words of 2 or less syllables how Xerox actually invented everything – at least just about everything he used in his daily life as a pre-sales consultant. We sat together and I introduced him to the fantasy and wonder of Xerox RARC.

Xerox RARC, the Palo Alto Research Center, was established in 1970 as part of the company’s long term research strategy. Parc has been responsible for transforming the Xerox corporation and the lives of almost every individual human being on the planet.

Consider what they have invented and developed since it was established and by the way, this is nowhere near a comprehensive list, just indicative of what they did create.

1971 – Laser Printing – now a multi-billion $ industry
1972 Object oriented Programming
1973 Ethernet and distributed computing
1974 Solid State Lasers
1975 Graphical User Interface
1977 VLSI circuits
1982 Fibre Optics
1988 Collaborative workspaces
1988 Ubiquitous Computing

The list goes on and I hadn’t even mentioned the first PC the Alto, or the input device they called a mouse. But what does this list have to do with the iPhone – well consider the last item on the list – I stopped at this one for a very good reason – the development of what the guys at Xerox PARC dubbed “ubiquitous computing”. The term was coined to describe a vision in which people seamlessly access resources and control environments using mobile devices. The devices included the palm sized PARCTab and a lightweight document reader; not to mention a flexible computational infrastructure that enabled wireless interoperable communication between devices.

Must have been an unbelievable place to work and I was fortunate enough to visit a few years back – fantastic.

So back to the point of the piece. Xerox may not have invented the iPhone per se but all the ideas were in place long before somebody with the commercial and design genius came along to make it available to all. I think my colleague now has a much wider appreciation of what Xerox gave the world.

Spend some time looking at http://www.parc.com/about/milestones.html it’s fascinating stuff.

Speak soon