Archives for February 2011

• Three word definition of Enterprise Architecture: Reduce Unnecessary Effort – Inside Architecture – Site Home – MSDN Blogs

  More wisdom from Nick Malik: “I explained that I am an Enterprise Architect, he asked what that is. I got my chance to use my new three word definition of Enterprise Architecture: Reduce Unnecessary Effort.

  This is the goal of alignment: to reduce unnecessary effort. We find the things that could be done, and the things that should be done, but also the things that should not be done, and we use that information to influence the governance decisions in the business. When the business “announces” a solution to a problem, we are there to vet that solution to insure that we do LESS unnecessary effort. We may end up doing less work overall, or perhaps not, but a greater fraction of our project portfolio will be necessary (strategic) work.”

  tags: entarch enterprisearchitecture nickmalik

• High-Performing EAs Are Challengers « Service Disorientation

  “Challengers succeed because they can teach, tailor, and create constructive tension with the customer. To build challenger skills, focus on helping architects teach, tailor, and assert control.”

  tags: entarch enterprisearchitecture chrisvenable

• How Hugh MacLeod’s “Evil Plans” Became an Illustrated Business Manifesto [Slideshow] | Slideshows

  “In his new book, Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination, Hugh MacLeod teaches us how to a make a living doing what we love. In this slideshow, the author gives us a behind the scenes take on life and happiness.”

  “You gotta commit to your evil plan for it to work. True risk is about real change and being uncomfortable. “This is about thinking you can have it both ways, MacLeod says. You can’t shake things up without risking anything.””

  tags: hughmacleod

• In the real-time business environment, size is no

• Burley, King of the snow mountain on Twitpic

  My boy Burley, having beat Zephyr for the prized orb on snow mountain (a.k.a. my front yard)

  tags: burley

• Jack Griffin’s Ouster: Lessons from a Failed “Change Agent” – Julia Kirby – Our Editors – Harvard Business Review

  Great point: “a catalyst lowers a barrier to effect a transformation”

  “Act as catalyst not cattle prod. Chances are, there is change energy to be tapped in the organization at some level. To get at it, think first of what might be holding it back, and address those things. As in chemistry, a catalyst lowers a barrier to effect a transformation — it doesn’t apply a shock.”

  tags: change leadership

• Pennant: an Interactive iPad Visualization of all Baseball History – information aesthetics

  Data visualization + baseball! ‘Nuf said.

  “Pennant [pennant.cc] is beautiful. No, it is even better: it is an interactive history of all the details that make up baseball history, comprising all the events of more than 115,000 games that took place between 1950 and 2010. You’ll need an iPad though.

  Pennant contains all the usual suspects of the current infographic style book: expect flip charts, circular bar graphs, and the kinematically-enhanced bubbles, now for your finger tips. The different visualizations provide an historical overview of any team’s complete overall history (since 1950) and contrasts any team’s season to the rest of the league…”

  tags: data visualization baseball

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Column 2 : SAP Analytics Update

  I was on this call. Nice of Sandy to document it for all of us. I’m interested in the Event Processing ties. Will get more info from SAP on Event Insight closer to the Feb 23 launch.

  “A group of bloggers had an update today from Steve Lucas, GM of the SAP business analytics group, covering what happened in 2010 and some outlook and strategy for 2011.

  No surprise, they saw an explosion in growth in 2010: analytics has been identified as a key competitive differentiator for a couple of years now due to the huge growth into the amount of information and event being generated for every business; every organization is at least looking at business analytics, if not actually implementing it. SAP has approached analytics across several categories: analytic applications, performance management, business intelligence, information management, data warehousing, and governance/risk/compliance. In other words, it’s not just about the pretty data visualizations, but about all the data gathering, integration, cleanup, validation and storage that needs to go along with it. They’ve also released an analytics appliance, HANA, for sub-second data analysis and visualization on a massive scale. Add it all up, and you’ve got the right data, instantly available…”

  tags: column2 sap analytics event_processing

• Not Dead Yet: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Java – tecosystems

  Thoughtful, data-rich, post from Steve O’Grady on the life and times of Java.

  “How then might we reconcile the above data with the conclusions of the Forrester analysts and the conventional wisdom of the enterprise they represent? For my part, the answer is simple: I break with them.

  According to the data at our disposal, it is apparent that on a relative basis, Java has peaked. It is not as popular as it once was, and is not likely to return to its former prominence in future. It is equally clear, however, that it is still a dominant platform, and the data we have on current usage and employment indicates that this position is sustainable moving forward.

  Which means that, from our perspective, Java is anything but a dead end. But as always, it depends on who you ask.”

  tags: java redmonk sogrady forrester

• IBM Redbooks | IBM InfoSphere Streams Harnessing Data in Motion

  “In this IBM® Redbooks® publication, we discuss and describe the positioning, functions, capabilities, and advanced programming techniques for IBM InfoSphere™ Streams.

  Stream computing is a new paradigm. In traditional processing, queries are typically run against relatively static sources of data to provide a query result set for analysis. With stream computing, a process that can be thought of as a continuous query, that is, the results are continuously updated as the data sources are refreshed. So, traditional queries seek and access static data, but with stream computing, a continuous stream of data flows to the application and is continuously evaluated by static queries. However, with IBM InfoSphere Streams, those queries can be modified over time as requirements change.”

  tags: ibm event_processing infosphere redbooks

• Cloud Computing Podcast: Top 3 Stories for January 2011 : elemental cloud computing

  Monthly podcast on top cloud computing stories featuring David Linthicum, Bill Russell and Brenda Michelson (me) on the Cloud Computing Podcast.

  tags: cloudcomputing linthicum podcast

• Should Information Be On The Balance Sheet? – Chuck’s Blog

  Chuck Hollis of EMC riffs on a question from James Governor (monkchips)

  “We Struggle To Think Of Information As Potential Value

  Generationally, we have not been trained to think of information as money.

  At one of the spectrum, traditional IT organizations view massive amounts of information as a cost, a risk, or perhaps both.

  And at the other end of the spectrum, many business users have fallen into the lazy habit of thinking in terms of silver-bullet applications that somehow magically deliver the right information at the right time, without going deeper to understand the nature of the information behind these convenient applications.

  Somewhere in the middle of these two extremes is a potential treasure trove of information-based value waiting to be unlocked for those that go looking.”

  tags: information economics

• EA Forum 2011: Key Tech Trends That Will Change Your Business | Forrester Blogs

  Forrester embraces Event Processing… [Told you I was early]

  “In “The Next Big Architecture Movement: Business Events,” Forrester’s VP and Principal Analyst John Rymer and Senior Analyst Mike Gualtieri will talk about business event architecture (BEA). Enterprise architects can use BEA to make business capabilities much more responsive to change. BEA is not just about event processing platforms — it’s a larger architecture paradigm that unifies SOA with other flexible platforms such as business rules management systems and business process management. Where rules can automate responses to individual occurrences, BEA can enable awareness of and consistent responses to patterns of events for much more complex scenarios. Just when you thought it was safe, another architecture movement arrives to rock your world!”

  tags: cep event_processing forrester

• The Power of the Right Question – Scott Anthony – Harvard Business Review

  “It’s natural for people pursuing innovation to jump into idea-generation mode. After all, when you generate ideas you feel like you’re making progress. But my experience suggests that you should spend roughly six times longer generating a killer question than positing answers.”

  “..The next time you or your team start generating ideas, stop. Step back. Make sure you’ve thought about the question you’re trying to answer…”

  tags: innovation thinking

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.