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Australian IT: While most folks are entertaining themselves by using Google Earth and Google Maps as technological time wasters, this author points out that the slick interface can — and should be — used to link public directory and mapping services with location-aware technologies such as RFID and GPS and internal business applications and databases. Such combinations open up a variety of mind-boggling business possibilities. In addition, he says, Google Earth and Google Maps show just how robust Web-based applications can be. Developers are more excited than they have been in years; at least some of that excitement is likely to translate into useful new apps. Line56.com: Offering employees a single interface into information concerning customers and business processes can benefit many companies. However, it's especially relevant for retailers, who have typically spent big bucks on customizing business applications. They can't afford to abandon these apps; instead, they need a way to offer their users consistent access to them. The article offers the real-world example of furniture retailer W.S. Badcock, which created a portal to allow store managers, many of whom are franchisees, to view online reports and performance of their stores relative to others, as well as the same human resources, payroll and financial applications used at corporate headquarters. Other examples include Best Buy and Home Depot, which offer sales training and other relevant information on kiosks, point-of-sale systems and shared employee workstations throughout their stores. | Sponsor: HDI | | HDI, Leading IT Service & Support
Align yourself with the world's largest membership association for the IT service and support profession and the premier certification body for the industry. www.ThinkHDI.com > Click here for more information. | Fast Company: Everyone has different ways of absorbing and disseminating information. The differences make the world a more interesting place — but they can also make it difficult to communicate ideas effectively, especially in settings like business meetings. For instance, while some folks like to illustrate all of their points with stories, others only want to get to the bottom line right away. The author shares tips designed to help minimize such differences, to the benefit of all in the conference room. So, for example, those who learn best by verbally expressing all of their thoughts should use phrases like "I'm just thinking out loud here" to avoid alienating others and perhaps even consider enlisting a coworker to give them secret signals when they are talking too much. ADTmag.com: Dr. Tushar Hazra, a senior consultant with analyst group Cutter Consortium, recently outlined seven best practices that he says organizations pursuing IT/business alignment initiatives should follow. This article walks readers through the interrelated practices, with suggestions on how to perform each: Establish effective communication, assess costs and benefits, determine business value, define roles and responsibilities, capture compliance requirements, conduct milestone reviews, and establish and update ground rules. The ground rules can consist of such seemingly simple ideas as not trying to identify all business stakeholders and business processes before a company starts its alignment planning, Hazra says. | | Special Offer: Free White Paper Understanding the Total Cost of Ownership of IP Telephony Solutions
In this study conducted by an independent research and consulting group, the often-hidden costs associated with IP telephony ownership are revealed. Discover this analysis methodology for determining TCO based on six cost categories. It's highly flexible and can be used to generate similar benchmarking for many different sizes and types of deployment comparisons. Check it out today! | | | | Rough Type: Well-known agitator Nicholas Carr obviously doesn't include too many views that don't mesh with his thoughts on the commoditization of IT in his blog. So, not surprisingly, he offers a shout-out to Lord Blyth of Rowington, the chairman of British drinks giant Diageo, for a recent speech in which the exec spoke out against what he called "the tyranny of technology," the inclination to try to solve problems with new technologies even if less expensive and easier solutions already exist. The chairman offered two reasons for this not-uncommon approach: It's difficult to sustain a technology-fueled competitive advantage, and companies often lack the required management skills to separate the truth from reality in technology proposals. Real competitive advantage is grounded in good management rather than IT investments, the Diageo chairman said. Carr says his sentiments will ring true for many CIOs. Knowledge@Emory: According to one of the most entrenched theories in R&D, technology follows an S-curve, starting out less effective than an existing technology before growing to surpass it and reaching a plateau where little, if any, improvement is possible. Based on this theory, researchers typically abandon mature technologies in favor of emerging ones. One problem: The S-curve theory may be faulty. After conducting an exhaustive study of 23 technologies, researchers Ashish Sood and Gerard Tellis found that more than 80 percent did not follow the S-curve. In some cases, new technologies outperformed incumbents immediately. In others, old technologies continued to improve and sometimes bested newer technologies. Adherence to the S-curve may cause companies to abandon a technology prematurely, the researchers say. They offer the example of the fluorescent light, which saw little improvement after companies decided to focus on newer and trendier lighting technologies. InformationWeek: Brokerage Ameritrade is offered as an example of a company that has successfully aligned its IT and business objectives. When the company recently acquired TD Waterhouse, it moved CIO Asiff Hirji into the COO's role, where he shares planning responsibilities with Ameritrade's CEO and CFO. The company's business heads set their goals and budget requests at the beginning of each quarter, then review goals against performance and make budget adjustments when the quarter ends. Hirji says this approach is far more effective than the six- to nine-month project planning window used by many companies. Ameritrade earmarks 70 percent of its IT budget for building new functionality and 30 percent for maintaining existing systems. It also relies on thousands of customers to test new functions before it rolls them out on a systemwide basis. | IT Marketplace | | | | | Tell the IT Business Edge audience of technology decision makers about your product, service, event, or job. Click here to list it in the IT Marketplace! | | 3 QUESTIONS:
Size Doesn't Matter When It Comes to SaaS
With Greg Gianforte, founder and CEO of on-demand CRM provider RightNow Technologies. RightNow is a member of the Enterprise SaaS Working Group, an independent industry association focusing on the needs and issues of large organizations seeking to make optimal use of software as a service. A white paper on the topic is available at www.rightnow.com/saas/. This 3 Questions originally appeared in Maximizing IT Investments. Question: On-demand applications have largely been the purview of SMBs until now. Are more larger enterprises becoming interested in on-demand apps and, if so, why?
Gianforte: We are selling RightNow CRM to more and more larger enterprises. The on-demand (hosted) delivery model for software applications is increasingly seen as an established and less expensive alternative to secure software. I think there was more reluctance to the on-demand model a few years ago as larger enterprises questioned the security and scalability of the model. These questions have largely been laid to rest as evidenced by the size and complexity of some of our deployments. We have customers that have automated their entire sales, service and marketing organizations, and have thousands of employees logging in everyday in multiple languages across dozens of countries. These customers have validated the security, scalability and functionality of the software, and are now realizing a ROI at a much earlier rate than they would have had they deployed the software on-premise (in-house). Question: What are some key differences in the on-demand needs of SMBs and larger enterprises?
Gianforte: Larger enterprises require choice in deployment, payment, upgrades, integration and customization. One size might fit all for SMBs, but not in large enterprises. For example, RightNow offers customers the choice of deploying either on-demand or on-premise. We have had customers who originally said they would not deploy on-demand, disqualified other on-demand vendors, and selected RightNow over other on-premise vendors due to our functionality. However, what frequently happens is that the customer wants to be live in 90 days but their IT organization is too resource-constrained to meet this timeframe. So they agree to deploy on-demand to get up and live quickly, thinking they can fall back on the on-premise option if it fails. They never end up deploying it on-premise once they see the speed to deployment and ROI with the on-demand model. Customers also require payment choice. There is a common misnomer in the marketplace that somehow on-demand means paying on a monthly subscription basis. Larger customers want the choice to pay for the software on a monthly, annual term, or perpetual basis, depending on if they want to fund it as an operational expense or a capital expenditure. So regardless of how our customers choose to deploy (on-demand or on-premise), they can choose any of the above payment options.
Most on-demand software vendors only maintain one version of their software, and whenever the next new version of the software is available, they automatically force upgrades to their entire customer base at once. This might be acceptable for a SFA deployment for 20 salespeople who only use the software for about 30 minutes each day. But some of our customers have hundreds and thousands of customer service agents. Automatically upgrading these types of larger customers when they may be having a product launch at the same time is absolutely unacceptable. We let our customers choose if and when they want to upgrade, and we provide a multi-tenet, multi-version architecture to support this. We even let our customers schedule their own upgrades whenever it's most convenient for them.
Finally, larger enterprises typically have more complex integration and customization requirements, especially when it comes to automating cross-departmental processes frequently involved in larger CRM deployments. We offer our customers the tools they need to seamlessly integrate and customize RightNow CRM, and our deployment experts are available to help them along the way. Question: Does it typically take large enterprises longer to achieve ROI with on-demand apps, when compared to smaller companies?
Gianforte: The ROI benefits of on-demand are just as compelling for larger enterprises, if not more so, than for SMBs. Regardless of company size, the ability to deploy a complex software solution in 45 days (our average deployment time) without the subsequent IT infrastructure to support it is untouchable from an ROI perspective. Add to the deployment ROI the tangible ROI benefits of our software functionality such as reducing call center call volumes by 50 percent or e-mail inquiries by 75 percent, and the cost savings can be astounding. | | Also from IT Business Edge: Voice & Data Convergence Voice & Data Convergence examines the strategic and tactical implications of emerging IP telephony technologies, from VoIP services to advanced CRM systems to security considerations. Find out what every IT decision maker should know. Click here to sign up! | By the Numbers
$5.9 billion Price Oracle is paying for number-one CRM player Siebel Systems. $700 million Amount earned by Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page when they took the company public in 2004. Those kinds of numbers helped land the pair in the top spot on Vanity Fair magazine's New Establishment list. 80 percent-plus Technologies that did not follow the famous S-curve during their development, according to researchers Ashish Sood and Gerard Tellis, who say their results should cause companies to rethink their R&D efforts. Breaking Headlines
internetnews.com: Auction site eBay put rumors to rest by announcing its acquisition of hot VoIP provider Skype Technologies for $2.6 billion in cash and stock. The purchase will strengthen eBay's online sales channel and payments platform, especially in emerging markets like India. Some of the technologies Skype is preparing to roll out, including video VoIP, seem especially well suited to eBay. Skype has 54 million members in 225 countries and territories and says it is adding about 150,000 users a day. National Business Review: Oracle's announcement that it is acquiring CRM powerhouse Siebel Systems for $5.9 billion is a nightmare for Microsoft, which has been making lots of public announcements about its intent to become a serious contender in the CRM space. Oracle is paying a nice premium of $10.66 a share for Siebel, its ninth acquisition of 2005. With the acquisition, Oracle handily becomes the number-one player in CRM, a market that thus far has not earned the interest of government antitrust regulators. New York Daily News: Meet the new boss, not the same as the old boss. Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page for the first time topped the New Establishment, an annual list of powerbrokers produced by Vanity Fair magazine, knocking Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. into second place. The Google top dogs made a cool $700 million each after taking the company public in 2004 and are worth $10 billion on paper. Other tech titans moving up on the list were Yahoo chairman Terry Semel, newly named Sony chief Howard Stringer and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. Sliding a bit was Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos, who dropped from No. 7 to No. 18. More traditional media types also didn't fare as well, with News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch falling from second to fourth place and his sons Lachlan and James dropping off the list altogether. Emerging Trends
Knowledge@Wharton: Singapore Management University professor Sheen Levine has written a paper on a nebulous yet common business practice: taking advantage of what he calls "performative ties," previously unknown peers who nonetheless offer helpful industry information, with the expectation that they will receive similar treatment from a colleague in the future. The practice is especially common among consultants and others who command a premium for their smarts. Interestingly, Levine says it's often difficult to extract the same kind of knowledge from coworkers because most companies have not fostered an environment conducive to exchanging information. One company that has done so is consulting firm Bain & Company, whose knowledge management practices are detailed in this article. Tips on encouraging performative ties within a company are offered, and links to further research on the topic are included. SearchNetworking.com: A majority of IT professionals interviewed by research firm TheInfoPro said they would like to simplify their network security with a multi-purpose appliance that incorporates the functions of multiple vendors. Nearly half of respondents indicated "more" or "much more" interest in such appliances than they had a year ago, with 55 percent of them saying they'd like to have functions from more than one vendor in a single box. Among the most desired features, cited by 70 percent of respondents, were a single management interface, integrated reports and lower costs. Streamlining management would be a definite bonus for the 42 percent of respondents who say they use more than six security vendors. Critics of such appliances say their inclusive nature makes it tough to diagnose software problems. However, a TheInfoPro analyst says it's easier to troubleshoot and fix any problems on newer appliances.
eWEEK: To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the desktop PC have been greatly exaggerated. But experts say it is changing, largely thanks to customers' desire to cut maintenance costs. PC manufacturers are joining with chipmakers to produce smaller, quieter desktop models that offer broader management technologies and communication capabilities. In May, Intel introduced its first Professional Business Platform for desktops, which includes its Pentium 4 600 series chips and 945G chipsets and is available with Active Management Technology (AMT), which monitors a PC's hardware and can help fix problems. So far, only Lenovo has adopted AMT, although brands such as Dell are reportedly evaluating it. Trying to mimic the success of Centrino in laptops, Intel will roll out a platform called Averill in 2006, incorporating its dual-core Pentium D 900 series chips with a beefed-up chipset, a new gigabit Ethernet network interface card and a more advanced AMT. It will also support virtualization, which can be used to partition a desktop to run multiple operating systems and software sets, opening up all kinds of possibilities for sys admins as well as end users. IT Business Edge: Aligning IT & Business Goals
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| | About the Editor
Ann All covered a variety of business topics as a newspaper reporter before switching to automated teller machines — which, unbelievably, are just beginning to migrate to a Windows-based platform and more modern networking technologies like TCP/IP — as the editor of online trade publication ATMmarketplace.com. She can be reached at investments
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