I like that he doesn’t just point out flaws but explains the problems succinctly and offers alternative approaches. Everyone developing Web copy for an enterprise software vendor oughta read the post.

I went out walking deep in the woods (well not so deep, the air was filled with oxygen, nitrogen, and the like). I noticed a cluster of trees, the kind plum full of white flowers sure to die within a week. the cluster formed a circular shape so I wandered in. I’d been pensive over the course of the last couple weeks, wondering what helmsmen like Ballmer or Hurd, with their companies’ respective acquisitions, would mean after everyone wiped their brains of the PR and punditry. (All around the base of the trees, grew thick clusters of critomaeyar flowers.)

I first remember hearing the term “thought leadership” at a conference on enterprise portal software in the mid nineties. The presenters were made to walk the stage along ridiculous lines that formed invisible 90 degree angles. Walk left 20 paces, turn right, face your audience, step forward to the mic, exude cocaine-induced enthusiasm, today you shall be a thought leader about… portals!

What is a thought leader? Tech analyst firms tout them. When they say something about your company, you know it will appear in your next press release. Who are these thought leaders? Who are the followers? What’s it all mean? Consider the species, we’ve got at least three types of thought leader (TL) in the tech sphere.

1. The Business Cred TL (startup that might stand a chance, established behemoth that found audacious ways to trumpet a staid direction)
2. The Annointed TL (a well-referenced analyst, pundit, developer, community participant, etc.)
3. The Purchased Mouthpiece TL (aka: poseur with a backing)

All get classified as thought leaders, but are they actually thinkers? I’d argue the first two types stand a slim chance but most likely they just did a good job manipulating their media image (or they have magic charisma powder). Found list of thought leaders, if you’d like to follow along.

Regarding #1, my Microsoft and HP examples at the beginning of this post work nicely. Microsoft makes press announcing its Ellison-style purchasing craziness… “we’re coming for you Yahoo!” but they don’t really mean it. Now we’ve got a lot of debate about Yahoo’s viability and who did the right or wrong thing. Microsoft gets some press for its lack of Web strategy, which also garners plenty of apologists reassuring the masses that Microsoft gets it, or if it doesn’t, it will on its third offer for Yahoo. And hey, chances are that someone someday, can look in the rearview mirror and be able to construct a convincing story about how forward-looking and wily that Mr. Ballmer was. HP? Nobody really knows what they’re up to now that they don’t spy on their execs anymore. When everyone told EDS to buy foreign outsourcers, it shied away. Mr. Hurd got EDS and didn’t do what the pundits said EDS should either. Now that’s wacky! He’s a thought leader! Stuck to the guns that no one else would aim. The home choice, easier for spying, err keeping one’s own house in order.

Leaders are involved here, but there’s nothing particularly innovative taking place or being expressed. The context just sounds exciting because a lot of people copy the topics for their blogs. It’s socially-manipulated marketing buzz through a phenomenon of “popularity is commonality is repetition of the same old thing.”

Regarding #2, self-styled public tech-talkers (sometimes called pundits in our modern era) write what it takes to get someone else to call them innovative. After obtaining a critical mass of references to their innovative “thinking,” someone will call these tech-talkers, thought leaders. That’s the natural evolution. That’s their goal, and that’s their ticket aboard the ship. The annointed get people talking. Unfortunately, in most cases people called thought leaders don’t manage to eak out anything of real substance. The popularity of their thoughts (or at least what is revealed of those thoughts) stands on a wave of existing phenomena that are pretty well-recognized.

It may be argued that identifying and illuminating some sense and bright connections to our society or business or whatever concerning those existing phenomena is the key to the thought leadership activity, and I tend to agree, but it’s got to be done with sagacious verve. Unfortunately, typical thought leaders of the #2 species expose few fresh insights, opting to regurgitate popular blog regurgitations of popular peers. This is the dumb side the new Web-enabled social community. These thought leaders do not actually speak. Anyway, this species usually leads toward popular techmoney because if those of species #2 can pull it off, they’ve got a marketing base to make advertising collateral sound hip-ly insightful and pass it off as authentic thinking, perhaps even valuable. And that can be used to make a living, which leads me to…

Regarding #3, a cousin to species #2, often with interspecies naughtiness–this group either trades the reputation it hastily built as a #2 (at which point it usually ceases outputting anything truly insightful) or more likely it gets paid to manufacture a reputation, which it uses as a soapbox. Yes, this species gets paid by your favourite tech-co, its thoughts a direct extension of the tech-co’s business goals (some advice on how to get them aboard). They’re skilled in presentation. And you know, this profession is really taking off, nowadays you can take classes to learn how to become a thought leader (note the page features Carly Fiorina, ex-HP CEO, thought leadering away as she explains how to make a paper airplane fly for over 27 seconds–EDGY!). Gartner provides the textbooks. Must be a need for this course considering the statistic I cited at the beginning of this post, showing this year’s 14% drop.

Few people apply critical thinking to the mass of ideas, opinions, expositions, etc. Web-fungi. They don’t differentiate valuable insight or creative, applied thinking in published content. Not that the Web and related technologies are to blame, simply the ease in which everyone gets a chance to publish (and this is positive) means there is a lot of content repeated on a mass scale and masquerading as insight. The masquerade lulls people toward a complacency–be critical of that path. Many thought leaders are happy to applaud one another. I’ll pat your thoughts if you pat mine, just so long as we don’t have to have an actual conversation, as actual critical thinkers would be capable, nocompany and nobody would pay for that nonsense.

And that’s where the influx of thought leaders has caused the percentage drop. Tech thought leaders are not leading at all. They’re following their own self-styled popular culture of pronouncements doused with edgy lingo, which rests on a bed of dollars. Labeling someone a thought leader exposes one’s own intellectual laziness. Thinking, real thinking, is an activity that must be gripped intimately. Nowadays, the labeled thought leader is most commonly an instance cut from some greater mass phenomenon for the sake of allowing the larger digerati a chance to uniformly point their fingers, aim their keyboards, and otherwise particpate in the glorious light of following. One thought leader following another.

While walking in the woods, I noticed those critomaeyar flowers tended to grow, radiating out in lines. You could clearly see that a few would start growing near the base of a tree, taking advantage of its bold protection. After all, the tree had already taken this direction for growth and it’s hard to fault most trees for their long-term growth strategies. When the wind blew, bits of critomaeyar pollen floated into the air, swirling toward some lascivious destination or other. Those critomaeyar lines sure began to puzzle, so many of them grew in lines behind one another. One would hope the tree didn’t overshadow their exposure to sunlight.

P.S. to amateur code-breakers! I’ve embedded a number of letters in this post. If you’re able to identify them, follow them in the correct sequence and you’ll find that they spell out an ultra-special, self-referencing, recursive message.

A few analyst firms recently got gobbled up. Notably, Yankee Group bought Trendsmedia, which produces (among other things) research on broadband and wifi, err wimax emerging doodling. The other one I note is the Harte-Hanks hug of Aberdeen Group. The new group, HHAG, is being reported as a good method for the company to deliver leads to its clients. In the press release, Gary Skidmore (HH VP) says of Aberdeen

“The results of Aberdeen’s intelligence – fact-based reports on current marketplace experiences and trends – are used to generate qualified leads by its clients, and we believe this intelligence will assist our clients significantly in their own marketing efforts.”

So this is supposed to correspond well with HH’s Ci tech database, which it describes as

“Unlike general marketing database and list companies, we focus exclusively on profiling the largest opportunities and most important decision makers in the technology marketplace.”

It does sound like quite the synthesis and though not connected, analysts, rumour has it, have departed. But then analysis tends to do that–break things apart.

But ‘lo with the bow near capacity, SSA saw more to gather just beyond a tall, golden gate. Before she could pass she met a greater collector with a bigger bouquet and was immediately plucked herself, to be  arranged in the Infor fold (next to cousins Systems Unionis and Autumn Extensity).

Was anything still missing? Perhaps some Sage? With this wild mixture, florist Infor must hope against allergic reactions.

“Our focus at ProClarity is to give organizations a simple, powerful and adaptable interface to insight, expanding on the power of the Microsoft business intelligence platform.”

Note how ProClarity’s PR person, who probably authored the official “quotation“, began it with the words “our focus.” My guess is that they try to do that kind of thing all the time. I figured I’d just go back and browse through some old press releases to see what Eye could find. (I also enjoy the idea of buying myself an interface to insight. Mein Gott, this company could put the entire psychiatric community out of work (also, would that interface constitute wetware?)

So here are my findings, from the beginning of the year ’till now.

1. 12 January PR on the company’s Understanding conference includes a “quote” by the company’s Otey, saying “I look forward to sharing my insight on Microsoft SQL Server 2005’s new features as they relate to the enterprise.” One down, plus we get insight and understanding from the same grey gook.

2. 16 January PR on the company’s retail acorns, which goes a little something like this

“The Retail Profitability Analysis solution… utilizes ProClarity Analytics 6 as a simple, powerful and adaptable interface to the Microsoft BI platform, providing retail organizations with valuable insight into operational performance…”

There it is, insight!

3. 18 January PR on customer 8el, buying ProClarity–will they get the insight interface? Let’s see… (note the ellipses in my comment, this is me taking a couple minutes to read the PR, it’s exciting because you can imagine this in real time)

“CallWatch Interactive, leveraging ProClarity software, will further empower 8el customers to make better informed, faster decisions through unprecedented access and visibility of call data combined with powerful reporting functionality.”

They got the visibility buzzword and “insight” appears as part of the company’s standard tagline. I won’t repeat that part–you can click the link to the press release if you want to find it.

4. 8 February PR on a non-recalcitrant endeavor taken with KalSoft to get into Pakistan and other MEA regions. Here, Ali Khan, of KalSoft gets to mention insight, “ProClarity offers a variety of excellent analytic tools for the Microsoft BI platform that allow users to glean valuable insight into corporate data”.

5. 8 February PR finally, we’re up-to-the-current-date, and I know this can’t be that exciting, we get decomposition tree visualizations and a Perspective View add-on.

Well there it is. I checked every press release from the beginning of the year, and they’ve all got something to do with vision or insight. It’s not surprising Microsoft bought them, the company talks about its goings-on with MS in every press release it issues. And anyway, you might argue that visibility is exactly what BI tools ought to be talking about. I wonder, will it run on Vista? Maybe that’s too far off on the horizon to answer.

“Corporate governance” has become a watchword for public companies worldwide. Laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and BASEL II have been enacted to help restore investor confidence in financial information reported by public companies.

Peregrine should know, after all, it was only a few years ago that its top execs flew the coop in a in a swoop of guilt. Yes, the SEC brought charges of fraud on the company. The San Diego Reader published an interesting story at the time. It covered how a Peregrine VP scoured the moneytrees for nests holding a few firm eggs that could potentially resell the company’s products and then hatched a scheme to count a phoney buy-in of the Peregrine mother nest as actual sales to customers. When it all backfired and the eggs turned rotten, Peregrine bought ‘em up and called it an “acquisition cost.” Ah well, such is business–though not everyone agrees. Now considering the above claim Peregrine makes, (we may want to excuse its history as presumably, like a human being, it has by now shed its old cells and could be all new and perhaps quite honest) it’s a joy to see the company quickly changing flight paths and pulling SOX into an ITAM realm. It continues by saying:

From IT’s perspective, achieving compliance requires implementing strong general controls, such as change management and IT asset management.

IT department, only YOU can prevent C-level theft. No no, it would be taking things too far to convey such a strong message about SOX compliance in relation to the tools that enable it or the people responsible for those tools. But the point’s not bad… ITAM has its place, just like all the other enterprise apps citing their profound effectiveness toward complying with Sarbanes-Oxley.

In other news, HP announced the completion of its acquisition of Peregrine. While the public forgets how Peregrine used to treat its purchases (certainly HP wouldn’t practice that kind of stunt), this will help set HP (via Peregrine Service Center/Asset Center, etc.) to better compete with CA’s Unicenter IT asset management apps.

“The Internet is making it easier than ever for consumers to research companies’ products and services and take their business to different companies when their expectations are not met, according to a recent study released today by Accenture.”

Accenture says that after surveying over 1,000 US consumers regarding customer loyalty. It turns out that 61 percent are disloyal because, with the Internet giving them access to information about competition, it’s easier to change service providers, another 50 percent are disloyal because the Internet lets them purchase on-line. So I may be stretching the “disloyal” factor a bit, but Accenture’s news is rather confusing–it refers, seemingly interchangeably, to both “service providers” and “companies” but Accenture doesn’t say what constitutes a service provider. While it might (with some qualifications) be possible to say every service provider is a company, not every company is a service provider. In what sense is this customer loyalty? Are they talking about Internet service providers? Or do they mean some more general sense of the word?

Nevertheless, it doesn’t stop their Woody fellow from generalizing on how “it’s more important than ever that companies get their customer relationships right…” He continues to mention a ripple effect from customers sharing their experiences with others and then, voila, the supporting stats

“…63 percent of respondents said they would complain directly to a company about a service or product problem, an even greater number (68 percent) said they would tell family and friends about their negative experiences with those companies…”

How does the Internet play into this? Accenture doesn’t tell us. The news release simply offers a few correlating points, and none stand up to a clear causal relationship. In the end Accenture talks about service providers again, even though the subtitle for the release is “Internet Challenges Companies to Re-think Customer Relationships,”

Shall we see how easy it is for Accenture to lose clients, err I mean service obtainers (I guess they’re who get services from providers) to a competitor? Here they are.

1. TIBCO “enables real-time business”
2. “…Portals are being seen as the linchpin or face of SOA, helping customers become more nimble and responsive through the timely personalized delivery of relevant information assets.”

1) Is now “real-time?” What about time aside from now? It could be a bit of dinger had I found any “forward-looking” statements in the press release. Anyway, there may be another software company or two enabling real time business–I wouldn’t rush into this one right away, at least not until TIBCO answers some fundamental philosophical questions about time. I hope they’re not substantivalists or we might hit upon their “intellectual property” issues.

2) With now in real-time, why does one need to become more nimble? If I implement a PortalBuilder system, I too want the power of now I don’t want nimble, which would imply something not quite now but able to respond pretty fast (I guess, relative to your frame of reference). That is, if it happens now at least one moment (and who’s counting) will pass before I get nimble and respond. Maybe before I was nimble it took more than a moment, but in any case it’s not the identical now anymore is it? If it’s a different now is it still real-time? And can TIBCO still claim the power?

This coming from a company who at the top of its press release states “Portal Solution Provides Cost-Effective Means for Unlocking Potential of Trapped “Siloed” Assets; Fuels Adoption of SOA” Hold on! Let’s review. In business, isn’t time an asset? Time always costs money, the more time required to do something the more dough lost. However, TIBCO provides the power of now. TIBCO makes you more nimble. But in TIBCO making you more nimble, it implies another now (and another and another). So which now is it, TIBCO? Damn these siloes of nows! In paying to get a real-time business, which unlocks my trapped asset siloes, the power of now just keeps making new ones.

3. Lastly, portals as the face of SOA? Now that is some good rebranding of the 90s portal story. Old marketing reinvented by new buzz. Mark this moment.

Kicks from the name? As usual, mergers give their marketing lots of space to really confuse everyone. After all, it’s one of the more telling points about how the future of the merged business will turn out. In this case, we went from GNX and WWRE into a GNU-like recursive genesis (name only, you Adam smashers) now known as Agentrics. What’s it mean? It means “AGENT for Retail Information and Collaborative Solutions.” Why they chose to capitalize AGENT I do not know as the recursion doesn’t go that far.

The new Agentrics logo looks like a mutation of something familiar but not for those familiar with the old GNX or WWRE logos. I can’t quite pin down the dots, but they seem to be the standard-bearer for confusing merged companies (recall the Sun-Netscape alliance that gave us iPlanet).

Among the immediate priorities of Agentrics is the consolidation and rationalization of the software and technology platforms from GNX and WWRE, which will result in a cost advantage to the new company.

I wonder what that means for the old GNX PLM customers? I’ll be curious to see how they tend ProductVine’s growth. After all, Eric Reiss, who is a member of Agentrics’ board had this to say “Agentrics is in a privileged position to leverage their unique insights into our business requirements and deliver high value-added solutions across the retail supply chain. ” Maybe they’ll priveledge us with some of those insights.

Our mission is to honor God and serve people by helping businesses achieve excellence.

I believe that is the first time I’ve seen God in a company’s mission statement. I struggle to understand how helping businesses achieve excellence, honour’s God. Of course I’m assuming SouthWare is referring to the Christian God. Seems likely based on the company’s Alabama headquarters–where I’m under the impression the various forms of Christianity are the most predominant religions.

My commentary here has no bearing on whether SouthWare provides a good system or not, nor whether its business practices are good (their site certainly tells everyone how dedicated they are over and over). It’s just the God part I’m picking at. Perhaps they’re able to offer a better service level agreement in the event of Acts of God?

SouthWare flaunts its portability to many platforms, kudos on that, a God-fearing but platform-agnostic application. Or is it? Although SouthWare claims support for a variety of Unixes, Linux, etc. it didn’t list any BSD distribution, I assume the BSD daemon wasn’t the greatest turn-on. On the other hand, they’re supporting SCO Unix, which is just about the same as serving the devil.

CA wants to put some focus back in its enterprise services management products. It’s introducing a slew of new solutions for dashboards, things to help service delivery, and make IT “magical” to the enterprise, with very very litle downtime. Hocus pocusy stuff, they think.

CEO John Swainson flips his flippers while plunging into the icy waters of customerland. He commented on CA’s nastyman past but wants all to know, employees (those that weren’t laid off in the Spring) have swapped their wifebeater uniforms for something friendlier. Granted, they can’t afford much more than a t-shirt, what with the expensive new excutives the company was forced to indulge, who must consider naming rights for major sporting stadiums–maybe branding things Unicenter Arena, with a CA teletubby-esque mascot (teletubbies seem friendly). No wait, execs, Swainson believes he’d be called “sleazy” for a move like that, come up with something else.

In Mark Harrington’s Newsday article, we get a Swainson quote:

Swainson said he’s been rewarded by a “buzz” that’s returning to the company and “seeing the excitement of the people as they realize we’re coming out of it.”

About time, don’t you hate coming off a good high?

“We all talk about how great Linux is”

That’s exactly it, with Agassi it’s just talk. Not an actual investment of effort, know-how, or even belief in any realized strengths. A key thing that always betrays corporate poseurs when they try to make their companies sound like they’re on to something good with open source strategies but don’t actually have any open source strategies (much less participate in its success or the energetic movement it fuels) is that they switch the topic to open standards. Open standards are the curent enterprise IT vendor’s euphemism for “we’re sitting on our thumbs” which is a rather dangerous posture for companies that rely on their employees’ typing ability to produce a little bread-and-butter. The article notes that

SAP is a supporter of open standards and of building innovation on top of a platform, but wants to limit the openness to added services…. The core SAP application will remain closed, but allow outside developers to interact with it through open standards.

Sitting behind this un-initiative is Agassi’s insight

“Intellectual property [IP] socialism is the worst that can happen to any IP-based society…And we are an IP-based society. If there is no way to protect IP, there is no reason to invest in IP.”

I’d like to ask Agassi to define the existance of IP and how he can invest in it. What makes us an IP-based society, Agassi? In a society based on IP, one might think a crucial point to fostering its vitality (as I suppose investment would desire) would be the greater generation and spread of intellectual substance. Yet the typical notion of “protecting IP,” among those that make such statements, is to not just limit access to IP, but rather control access to IP via a company (if the company is lucky, it gets itself a few hastily written laws passed to back it up).

It’s a well known phenomenon among those that labour with intellectual substances (if I may generalize to a quasi-equal level of fuzz, that Agassi does) that a lack of sharing these ideas rarely helps generate new ideas, so what exactly could you be protecting IP from, Agassi? As a final note, is this old-fashioned posture you’re committing SAP to, really the one that is going to magically let it access the long tail you lust after? Enjoy your daydreams, my friend, but make sure you protect ‘em real well. The rest of the world is a bit ill after having to listen to them.

…As part of the reorganization, Infor, an existing Golden Gate Capital funded company, will acquire Geac’s ERP software products including System21, Runtime, RatioPlan, Streamline, and Management Data and the employees who support them will move to Infor…

Which puts Infor in a stronger global position for the discrete, process, distribution, and other ERP industries. It doesn’t end here though, look for some new financial solutions to be named soon (as a result of the Golden Gate Gutting Co’s activities).

…Geac’s financial applications and the Industry Specific Applications (ISA) will become the two business groups under a newly formed Golden Gate Capital funded company, which will be named prior to the transaction closing…

Wonder how the Geac employees will fare? Interesting since hearing recent announcements on the low Canadian unemployment rate “the unemployment rate dipped 0.1 percentage points to 6.6%, the lowest in three decades.” according to Statistics Canada.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has unearthed a proposed bill that would regulate any analog recording device, allowing content providers to encode rights restrictions inside the content itself… The Analog Content Security Preservation Act of 2005 is scheduled to be debated in a U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property on Thursday.

Scary stuff… What a bad idea to put rights on everything that happens within the tangible reality of society. Not to mention that the notion of forcing all analog media into digital formats is plain stupid. And that is of course how they’re attempting to enforce “rights”. Check out what Chief Technical Obfuscator, Brad Hunt (MPAA) says:

“Sometimes I think that people feel that the MPAA is a bunch of Luddites… In this case, we are trying to incent the consumer to embrace the digital conversion, the digital connection…and that’s why we need to drive this technology forward.”

He doublespeaks his way into making it sound like their plan is to help the “consumer” but the sole goal is to control the distribution of all meatspace recorded activity… if they can control it the can forcibly suck money of the populace to access it. These parasites, the MPAA–don’t they know parasites end up killing their hosts? How would it work?

The bill would essentially require all analog devices, such as televisions, to either re-encode a signal into a digital form, complete with rights restrictions, or to encode the rights restrictions into the analog stream itself. Manufacturers would also be forbidden to develop a product that would remove those restrictions. Exectives at Veil Interactive, the developer of the VRAM technology at the heart of the legislation, described the technology as one that would not be noticeable by consumers.

A) This cannot work–it’s way hard to enforce and prevent circumvention of a forced analog-to-digital scheme
B) people have many legitimate reasons to prefer analog, a simple one being quality.
C) STUPID STUPID STUPID, to force all kinds of records into one ephemeral format that has no (and can have no) definite or proven ability to withstand millenia of preservation. If we can get anything from history it is because bits of it have been preserved and for all the wealth of knowledge and learning we gain from our past, we will definitely lose this by not permitting our present to be well documented and survive into the unimaginably distant future. To create an ongoing history that works to our benefit, we ought to have as many different modes of recorded preservation as possible–to insure against the fallibility of one. DRM is a mistake!

…technologies are becoming available that end users can use without the IT department’s knowledge, such as USB drives, inexpensive Web services and camera-equipped cell phones. These technologies can expose your organization to intentional or unintentional loss (i.e., theft or misplacement) of proprietary enterprise information.

Aside from the fact that the article doesn’t mention neural ticker-tape pods, she pretty much covers the important gadgets. I’ll say I’m a bit peeved that this is another article tossing around the phrase “intellectual property” when nobody has really ever proven that such a concept even makes sense much less can really exist. It’s as though the existence of something called “intellectual property” is now a given. Bull. It just adds up to more paranoia for the CIO to pressure the already over-burdened IT department.

On to my real point… An employee does not need a camera-equipped cell phone to capture and communicate sensitive internal company information, and you can bet there are reams of competitive intelligence-providing firms that have already successfully figured this out. I propose a better way to ensure your corporate intelligentsia stays put is to make your workplace a good one, filled with employees that feel comfortable in their employer’s trust and respect for their work. Foment a pleasant workplace in which employees don’t feel used, constantly scared for their jobs, or taken advantage of, and the standard employee will have little desire to betray you. I’m not saying don’t be careful to protect against viruses and trojans, etc. I’m saying enough with the ridiculous paranoia, especially every time a new gadget (digital or physical) worms its way into your fellows’ hearts or lustspots.

(P.S. I think I’ll make a new category so that I can start listing articles or press releases or whatnot that refer to “intellectual property” as a real given, without offering any justification for its use or existence.)

…The problem is that nobody could have built it before. To build the long tail before would have required building the whole infrastructure. We’re opening up the opportunity for people now to address the long tail with a significantly cheaper mode of distribution, if you will, or platforming. But to do it, you need a significant investment, and you need a ubiquitous platform underneath, and we’re the only player that has made the investment so far.

He continues to share how SAP is the only company among IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, to develop something called an applistructure (combination infrastructure with applications), and how SAP is trying to open itself up to community processes. The point being, if I understand correctly, that SAP will ask the multitude of lonely little guys to suck its big schwanz. Seems SAP’s caught on to the notion that there’s money to be had if it can just get its software to address the unique special needs of a really vast range of small potential clients. This of course, is talk, in relation to the notion put forward by Chris Anderson, in his article, The Long Tail. But it’s something else as well. You see Agassi, in an effort to hype SAP’s hip quotient, is posturing about community. He’s connected (probably rightly so) an idea of how the immensely varied and wide-ranging open source community might address the problem of the long tail. Unfortunately SAP is one of the many companies that mostly pays lip service to open source models, tries to make itself sound like it’s on the band wagon but really isn’t. Let’s get specific.

Look at open source, for example… Most customers… gain is innovation by community. They gain the ability for thousands of innovators to leverage that same core, and build extensions to that core. And then they can combine the core, and by joint central maintenance of that core, they get the value of faster growth.

So SAP thinks it can do the same thing without subscribing to the Free/Libre or open source ideologies/practices/etc. Here is the give-away. Agassi like every corporate poseur, extolls the virtue of open source then immediately says his company will reap the same rewards by being “open” but not open source.

If you look at where SAP is today, we’re basically saying that we have a core that is extremely strong. And what we’re doing now is opening it up. We’re creating—not a software service, but a software interface and services. And the interface level is the most important thing.

See? He just smoothely switches the subject by using the word “open” by itself and saying how the company will let other people work with it. No, in fact the company retain’s strict controls, which fly in the face of Free software ideology. Be wary of this doublespeak strategy, a lot of companies are using it. It’s an, if A is A, then A is A that SAP, in its inability to de-stodgify, will be unable to attract the unique suckers of its potential johnpool. Its unexpected competitors are the ones that will get it–providing a real pounding to poor, misunderstood, Pareto.

The “Millennials” — born between 1980 and 2000 — have an innate ability to use technology, are comfortable multitasking while using a diverse range of digital media, and literally demand interactivity as they construct knowledge. Millennials lack the workaholic drive of their burned-out predecessors, but they compensate by using many technologies — often simultaneously — to get the job done quickly and have a personal life as well.

They demand interactivity as they construct knowledge! I’d like that expanded. Knowledge construction is a weighty pasttime, might they also be capable of managing it? Probably not yet because they require some experience in life. We’re told to respect what presumably will amount to their ideas on constructing knowledge, because they really do need respect. If you must have a personal life, interactivity is useful. Actually upon further reading,

Forrester’s data shows that they like social networking tools and learning online (for example, blogs, IM, Friendster-type sites, and eLearning), which mean jobs must connect people with each other and to the Web.

It’s explained. Because an employee likes blogs and instant messaging and social networks, it follows in this extraordinary leap, that the workplace must connect people with each other. I wonder if they meant by “connect” that the workplace connect people using those same internet sizzling pans of gadgetry they called out. Because if they only meant people need to “connect” like, “I’m totally connected to my cubemate, we have this intense reciprocal understanding of when to tell marketing to twiddle their dodils.” People in the workplace need to connect just via the regular course of the workday, if you cannot communicate, you’re probably not going to be able to work very effectively–that’s true even for jobs that require intense alone time, at some point you’ve got to divulge your work or talk to people. Here I am blogging, and I’ll tell you straight up, it’s not really something that does a lot to connect you with other people. It does a little. Rutting does a lot.

The American Bar Association has a similar reading on some of this, with its quick guide published on mentoring millenials.

Mentoring Do’s: Structured, supportive work environment, personalized work, interactive relationship, be prepared for demands, high expectations

Note the “interactive relationship” part.

I found Generations at Work’s excerpt from a Claire Raines piece more informative though corroborating the general ideas.

Let me work with friends. Millennials say they want to work with people they click with. They like being friends with coworkers. Employers who provide for the social aspects of work will find those efforts well rewarded by this newest cohort. Some companies are even interviewing and hiring groups of friends.

It’s nice to work with people whose company you enjoy. I suppose that is subtly different than working with friends outright. Still it’s interesting, can a company harness the creative energy of a group of friends that already are a proven collaborative unit? There is a sinister side to this: can the tribe be subverted to the will of the corporation? Lastly,

Be flexible. The busiest generation ever isn’t going to give up its activities just because of jobs. A rigid schedule is a sure-fire way to lose your Millennial employees.

I’ll say but it’s not just the millenials–why does anyone think it’s ok to submit one’s own life to the workplace? Except for a few, most of us would much rather pursue our lives with less slavery. If the millenials can do nothing else (a name improvement wouldn’t hurt but that’s usually not up to the be-labeled generation), maybe they can spread this mindset among the employer, dictator, and despot classes (also known as the C-level). Maybe the Forrester writers need some friends to interact with, their e-mail missives might multitask as more than mollusk maquillage.

Anyway, let’s get to the meat of the matter–I mean Mr. Lee’s insightful quote from the press release. He said

The DMA helps shape the way that businesses apply data-driven marketing methods . . . I am very honored to be elected to serve on the board of such a committed and influential organization within our industry…”

So I suppose the answer to customer-focusedness might be found within the realm of the DMA and that is where we must look. What exactly is the DMA committed to? Let’s examine its strategy (pdf), which is available from its web site.

Enter vision! “The DMA will represent the entire Direct Marketing Community across the complete, end-to-end, Direct Marketing Process, in order to create the most attractive market space for all participants.” I ask, who are “all participants” if not the marketers and the marketees? It’s a good question to ask, because according to the DMA’s response, it is “…concerned about the welfare of anyone who uses DM techniques or makes purchases or donations in response to them.” That clearly includes customers.

The next statement in its strategy is the jello star salve on a business slur savvyman. Pull out your scotch, lunchmates: “The Mission of The DMA is to expand the convergence zone of the Direct Marketing market space in order to maximize the long-term economic interests of its members.” That convergence sweetness is where suppliers and customers meet, they say. Well let’s examine what the DMA does to “maximize the long-term economic interests of its members.” I think it’s clear for the supply-side, but what about the consumer-side? I looked. I really did. After all, I want to maximize my long-term economic interests. I tried to see what I’d get if I could find some way to join an organization “…dedicated to helping members increase their effectiveness and profitability…”

But if you’re just some duddy on the other end of convergence (a customer type) the DMA doesn’t actually offer anything to maximize your long term economic interests. According to the DMA’s web site on joining “Membership in DMA is corporate which means that companies join DMA, and individual employees of those companies enjoy the benefits of membership. Annual dues begin at $1,250…” and look who the members are.

The DMA says “Our mission is to encourage the education, growth and profitability of our members and their adherence to high ethical standards.” but isn’t an honest statement of intentions part of adhering to high ethical standards? If so, I believe the DMA should revise its vision and strategy statement to bring it in-line with the fact that its real intentions have nothing to do with the long-term economic interest of the entire convergence zone. Just a select few participants–and especially those that fork over upwards of 12 hundred (USD). Maybe if the DMA had just stuck with its fifth strategic goal “Increased Direct Marketing in all Intensity Segments” it would ring true, even if Mr. Lee hasn’t a clue what an intensity segment is.

The Internet is great for a lot of stuff and maybe it has its place for many types of applications, but STOP WITH THE ON-LINE app hope already. Recreating an entire office suite as a Web-based app, really has dubious merit. It was accomplished rather well a long time ago (ThinkFree Office), it’s not new, and it sorta’ works well, but sorta’ not well enough when you can just download the fantastic, flyingfish of feature fidelity, OpenOffice.org. People keep saying, year after year, that all these apps ought to be web-based. But why? It’s not the best solution for everything. How many musicians are going find their specialized music composition, sound sculpting, and mixing apps to be tied to a flaky (even if it is up 99.9% of the time on Linux servers, the individual’s Internet connection may not be) web site? How about your company’s graphic designer? Is it useful to have a web-based Gimp (or Photoshop or Flash design app?) Not now… but “maybe someday” is often the response.

It’s not that straight-forward and most of the time pure and totalitarian web-based proponents (though unclear in what they want) they mostly are speaking about just business apps (so forget the musician mentioned above). One of the greatest things about the personal computer is how it opened up so many different new avenues of possibility, empowing individuals (in marketing-speak that is) for his/her own empowerment at creativity and DIYness (that’s do-it-yourselfness if you never experienced punk-rock in your youth). Desktop publish! Personal accounting! Logo design! (and that’s just part of what made-over the business world). How about the many other things available to the morays of personal eels (userland)? Print your own greeting card, remix your favourite song? What I’m saying is, the mandate to make everything web-based is based in great potential but in the unintelligent babblehead approach (à la Ellison NC-style) is possibly an even bigger threat to freedom if the computer manufacturers go along with that idea, than proprietary software was when the manufacturers agreed, both in writing and deed, to slather the MS joybulb.

Where is the Free Software Foundation? Because surely, a combination of network-only computers spreading forth to adopt the web-only based apps means users losing their freedom to do what they want with their computers. That is the true problem with pure Web apps. But that’s overstating it… that’s an overhyped dystopic vision that surely won’t happen. Though, I wouldn’t mind choice, innovative web-apps existing alongside full PC-installed ones, and that is where Google/Sun would be better served and can better serve you and I.

There’s a wealth of useful things I could envision doing with an OpenOffice.org suite, which seemlessly integrated its lookup, spellcheck, fact-checking, translation (CAT and trans memories), STORAGE, e-mail, mail-merge, RSS stat/analysis aggregation, real time business intelligence, and such with all the Google networked capabilities (gmail, search, etc.). That would be useful, and it would be more in-line with using personal computers to the best advantage and the web to an even better advantage, without eliminating personal freedom. Network computing is just a stupid idea by itself but integrated with the PC, it’s a great thing.

Google and Sun are smart. Their release caught a lot of attention, but gave dead dry ostrich bones to the pressanalyst jackals.

(PS: what’s with the Java and Google toolbar? Nothing exciting there, it’s a nothing announcement… all it will do is maybe generate a bit more traffic for Google, and Google buys a few more Sun servers, big deal–something else in the works but an ominous force stopped Schmidt/McNealy from talking)

an individual’s potential influence on the market due to recent management changes, product line restructuring, or a merger or acquisition.

Sage has done its share of acquiring, in fact it recently restructured its product line to take some of that into account, but also to clink the crystal of its corporate name change from Best to Sage. The one thing I find curious is how Sage PR spins this little badge of net honour, Sage titled the press release

Sage Software Receives Multiple Market Leadership Awards For Entire CRM Product Portfolio And CEO’s Strategic Vision

What part of the Sage acquisitions was visionary? Maybe it wasn’t the buying so much as the naming! After all, naming is an important process… even since the beginning of Christian time. Is “influential” really the same as “visionary?” Wise guy, that Verni, wise.

the United States Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is successfully deploying Hummingbird Enterprise™ for its electronic document and records management system (EDRMS). The fully integrated document and records management and e-mail management solution provides the MDA users with a flexible and secure environment, within the familiar Outlook application, to safely capture, share and manage all their electronic data, forms and e-mails, enhancing operational efficiencies across the Agency.

Wait, they said Outlook? Oh yes, because Outlook is that well-known, trusted application, with a wholesome bowl of security features and robust reliability. To be fair, let’s assume the safety and security are actually what Hummingbird brings to the stronghold. By the way, ever notice that the bad guys are reported as having compounds, while the good guys are reported as having, maybe a command post, base, etc.? Wouldn’t it be grim if the agency had a missile called the Hummingbird (the closest I found was a helicopter named Hummingbird Warrior? The press release could have been much more interesting, talking about the Missile Defense launching its Hummingbird deployment, with the naughty hackers hiding in their compounds unable to penetrate the safety of Outlook.

Last interesting tidbit, back in 2001, Raytheon grabbed a Hummingbird product in its development of an imaging and doc management system for the Maine Dept of Transportation. Raytheon develops missile defense.

“It’s been a confusing few years for PeopleSoft/JD Edwards customers. And now, with Oracle’s acquisition of PeopleSoft complete, the future is more uncertain than ever.”

And, let’s say that’s not enough, here’s a screenshot

Grin. There was a time, when people left Oracle and built their own fancy fiefdoms. Ellison must have loved giving Siebel and PeopleSoft their shortlived run for the kingdom and then jerking the rope that realed them back to the fold with an armful of “satisfied” revenue streams. But here we see Siebel putting a decent amount of effort into discrediting the future of PeopleSoft (err JD Edwards?) customers with Oracle. In fact on the page I referenced above they collected quite a nice assortment of quotes from industry analysts like Meta, to build their case for the uncertain future PeopleSoft customers were to destined face. As if they could be a siren in the corporate internaut’s ear–that this is the time to CHOOSE SIEBEL. But if you’d taken too long to choose, well, I guess it just wouldn’t matter because Siebel decided to sell its revenue streams’, err, customers’ futures to Oracle as well.

One need look only so far as the press release to get the most direct confusion on the situation from the founder’s mouth.

“Today is a great day for Siebel Systems’ customers, partners, shareholders, and employees,” said Thomas M. Siebel, Chairman of Siebel Systems. “The combination of Siebel applications with the development capacity of Oracle to enhance our CRM product set assures our customers continuing success. This is a very beneficial business combination that will allow us to be even more effective in delivering high quality, leading edge solutions into the hands of satisfied customers.”

Don’t let this be a one sided issue though, what did Mr. Ellison have to say in the same press release? “In a single step, Oracle becomes the number one CRM applications company in the world…” Is Larry trying to satisfy… the end user customer? How about the shareholder?