Part 1 of this blog series described Unit 4 Agresso’s (or Agresso in further text) dual product strategy following its acquisition of CODA in 2008. The post then went on to analyzing (and reinforcing if you will, given a number of previous blog entries on the same topic) the post-implementation agility capabilities of Agresso Business World (ABW) [evaluate this product].

The blog post attempted to explain how the product’s underlying VITA architecture differs from contemporary service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based architectures. Part 2 of this blog series analyzes the CODA Financials product and its underlying Link  architecture. Contrary to Agresso VITA, CODA Link (a.k.a. CODA 2link) architecture is indeed SOA-based and supports superior connectivity. Read the rest of this entry »

The first part (Part II) of this blog series described the opportunities for software as a service (SaaS) or on-demand applications, especially in the current difficult economic milieu. Part IIa then analyzed the top five SaaS assumptions (misconceptions) recently outlined by Gartner.

Before any vendor can embark onto delivering a SaaS offering, it must thoroughly consider a number of harrowing SaaS technology choices and their implications. Thus, Part IIa also analyzed the decision’s impact on the functional footprint (scope) of the future SaaS product, after which the aspiring SaaS vendor must identify gaps within its in-house skill sets and define how to fill them.

This part continues with the other major remaining technical considerations before any vendor can embark on delivery of a SaaS offering. Read the rest of this entry »

The first part of this blog series described the opportunity for software as a service (SaaS) or on-demand enterprise applications, especially in the current difficult economic milieu. But before any vendor can embark on delivering a SaaS offering, it must understand several misconceptions about SaaS.

Part two then analyzed the first two of the top five SaaS assumptions that Gartner recently outlined in its research.  Read the rest of this entry »

Wow, how time flies and how many things have happened in the market these days to distract a market observer! Namely, only over a year after my SaaSy Discusions (Part I) and SaaSy Discussions (Part Ia) blog series, some time has at last become available for more discussions on the intriguing topic of software as a service (SaaS).

The title of this SaaSy discussions series might be somewhat deceiving, since the question might no longer be whether to go for SaaS or the on-demand computing deployment mode, but rather how to go about it for both vendors and users. Indeed, the current tough economic situation certainly has something to do with making this “go on-demand” decision a bit easier for both software providers and users. Read the rest of this entry »

Part I of this blog series introduced the concept of complex event processing (CEP) and possible needs for CEP software applications. One such broad CEP platform, Progress Apama, has been offered by Progress Software Coporation after acquiring formerly independent Apama LTD in 2005.

Part II then discussed Apama’s current state of affairs and its real-life deployments at companies outside its traditional stronghold of capital markets and algorithmic trading. So, what makes this product particularly attractive? Read the rest of this entry »

The worn-out saying about how we learn new things every day applies to this blog topic too. Namely, my interest in Progress Software Corporation has long been due to its renowned OpenEdge development platform. Indeed, many enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other applications providers leverage (embed) OpenEdge as Progress Software partners. Sure, I also follow and have recently written about the company’s forays in the service-oriented architecture (SOA) space with its two respective offerings: Actional for web services management and Sonic for enterprise service bus (ESB) and messaging.

But in late 2007, out of mere courtesy, I accepted a briefing about Progress Apama, the company’s platform for complex event processing (CEP), algorithmic trading, and whatnot. Given the overwhelming nature (“rocket science” of a sort) of the offering’s concept, I now admit that I could not wait for the briefing to end.

Actually, I felt bamboozled like those ordinary mortal FBI agents in CBS’ primetime hit show “Numb3rs.” In that show, time and again the whiz kid math genius (the brother of the FBI team leader) tries to explain to these action-rather-than-theory agents how some complex and arcane math theory can be applied to make sense out of seemingly chaotic and unrelated events. Eventually, complex math solves some important crimes, often by detecting patterns that are not obvious to the naked eye.

Well, fast forward to early 2009, where at Progress’ Analyst Summit (a traditional Boston winter fixture event) we could all find out that Progress Apama is possibly the best performing and growing part of the company. OpenEdge, while still contributing to over 60 percent to Progress’ total revenues, is a mature business that is now sold mostly to independent software vendors (ISVs). In addition, the recent financial markets (and consequently the overall economic) crisis and related cases of high-profile frauds (”white-collar crimes”) have made me conduct my own study of Apama and become familiar with its underlying concept. Read the rest of this entry »

IFRS is an accounting standard dealing with global financial reporting. XBRL is an electronic language describing financial data according to global standards. This article describes why IFRS will displace GAAP in the US and the link between IFRS and XBRL. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 3 of this blog series analyzed the ever-evolving user interface (UI) and visualization technologies, and related approaches of Microsoft and other independent software vendors (ISVs). Lawson Smart Office and IFS’ Project Aurora (including the first Project’s delivery, IFS Enterprise Explorer [IEE]) were described.

Shedding Some “Northern Star” Light on IEE

For IEE IFS uses Microsoft ClickOnce, which is a technology designed to perform web-based deployment of rich applications. Basically the authorized user clicks on a link and the application loads straight from the web server without needing to be installed and distributed via CDs (like traditional client/server applications). It works similar to the counterpart Java Web Start or Adobe Flash technologies. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 2 of this blog series analyzed Microsoft platform parts that are slated for shared use within the Microsoft Dynamics family of products. Particular attention was given to Microsoft SQL Server, SharePoint, and parts of Microsoft .NET Framework.

What About Visualization and User Interface (UI) Technologies?

However, what has somewhat intrigued me is Microsoft’s not-so-vocal touting and promoting of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), although it is an intrinsic part of the .NET Framework. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, the tool has not yet been used within the Dynamics set in earnest, although Lawson Software  and Verticent would be the two independent software vendors (ISV) that I am aware of deploying it. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series concluded that Microsoft would not converge all of its diverse Microsoft Dynamics  product lines into a single enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Rather, the vendor has been attempting to leverage the best practices and technologies across all of the products, where possible.

The idea is to deliver applications that have the following characteristics: are familiar to users within their organizations, fit with existing corporate systems, fuel business productivity, and enable confident and informed decision making processes. Read the rest of this entry »

I can partly understand analysts’ temptation to beat up on Microsoft’s forays into the enterprise applications space. To be fair, ”the empire” has had its share of strategic and tactical miscues, as if it had wanted to give these naysayers some ammunition. For one, many analysts and market observers first criticized the giant for not having a unified enterprise resource planning (ERP) product line, but rather several diverse ones, coming from acquisitions of former Great Plains Software and Navision Software a/s.

Today, we are talking about the following four Microsoft Dynamics ERP product lines:

1. Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly Great Plains) [evaluate this product];
2. Microsoft Dynamics NAV (formerly Navision) [evaluate this product];
3. Microsoft Dynamics SL (formerly Solomon) [evaluate this product] ; and
4. Microsoft Dynamics AX (formerly Axapta) [evaluate this product] .

Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog topic introduced the notion of how complex and tricky it can be to manage and govern enterprise applications’ service oriented architecture (SOA). That blog post also tackled Progress Software’s recent acquisition of Mindreef in order to round out its SOA governance solution for distributed information technology (IT) environments.

Mindreef joined the Progress Actional SOA Management product family that provides policy-based visibility, security, and control for services, middleware, and business processes. This acquisition continues Progress’ expansion of its burgeoning SOA portfolio and strengthens the company’s position as a leader in independent, standards-based, heterogeneous, distributed SOA enterprise infrastructures.

Prior to being acquired, Mindreef decoupled some plug-in features from its previously all-in-one SOAPscope Server suite. Read the rest of this entry »

Certainly, I admit to not being a programmer or a techie expert (not to use somewhat derogatory words like “geek” or “nerd”) per se. Still, my engineering background and years of experience as a functional consultant should suffice for understanding the advantages and possible perils of service oriented architecture (SOA).

On one hand, SOA’s advantages of flexibility (agility), components’ reusability and standards-based interoperability have been well publicized. On the other hand, these benefits come at a price: the difficulty of governing and managing all these mushrooming “software components without borders”, as they stem from different origins and yet are able to “talk to each other” and exchange data and process steps, while being constantly updated by their respective originators (authors, owners, etc.).

At least one good (or comforting) fact about the traditional approach to application development was that old monolithic applications would have a defined beginning and end, and there was always clear control over the source code. Read the rest of this entry »

This week BMC announced it had secured the purchase of ITM Software, a business management provider. BMC is a publically traded data center automation company that competes directly with CA Inc, HP, and IBM. It’s clients include DELL, Home Depot, and Toyota. Over the past two years, BMC has been busy snapping up different IT companies, such as Proactive Net (June 2007), RealOps (July 2007), and Emprisa Networks (October 2007). It’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Bengal Acquisition Corporation acquired 96.7% interest in BladeLogic. Read the rest of this entry »

Part I of this blog post introduced the common software deployment models and Consona CRM’s approach in that regard. To the end of enabling Total Customer Management (TCM) via an adaptive CRM offering, Consona CRM is built with a superior core infrastructure (customer data model, BPM, BI, SOA) and a holistic, best-of-breed product portfolio.

Consona claims to be one of the market’s rare CRM offerings that is both operational and collaborative, with many years of a broad range of consulting, technical, and business process services that have created the related methodology and blueprint.

Consona CRM Portfolio

The vendor believes that it offers the best value for price in the market due to the extensive product’s flexibility and adaptability, ease of customization, configuration, integration and upgrades, and due to the depth of the product’s extensibility.

These capabilities come from the combination of Onyx Adaptive CRM (i.e., BPM, BI, SFA, customer service, customer data management and customer data integration [CDI]), KNOVA (i.e., self-service and knowledge management [KM]) and the partnership with Million Handshakes (part of Portrait Software) for marketing automation. Read the rest of this entry »