Let Me Know When this Prediction Expires
23 November 2004 by Adam Cuothe
On CLM in 2005–Andrew Bartels of Forrester Research:
Contract life-cycle management (CLM) applications will experience rapid growth of 40% in demand in 2005, driven by the growing desire of enterprises to manage contract creation, negotiation, and compliance on an enterprisewide basis, to help ensure compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and to capture savings buried in contracts with suppliers and sales or licensing revenues in contracts with customers or licensees of intellectual property. While supplier relationship management (SRM) and customer relationship management (CRM) vendors will make inroads with process-specific contract management modules, specialist vendors who offer enterprisewide CLM solutions will experience the strongest growth. Attracted by the strong growth in CLM, enterprise content management vendors will make their first forays into CLM but will experience little success in 2005 until they build up adequate capabilities through acquisition and internal development.
Since the birth of the US’s Sarbanes-Oxley Act, all the software providers seem to be touting their new methods for helping companies comply. Everyone wants to comply. Well, I suppose. It makes sense that it’s pulled in for the notion of contract life cycle management as well. I find it interesting that the topic of contract management comes up every few years. For a while the hot thing was CLM based in EAM, which works because often contracts coincide with the reception, use, and disposition of an asset. This is true at least with physical assets, most IT assets, and digital assets perhaps present some new nuances on the situation because nobody can really agree on how best to deal with the murky realm of digital assets and “intellectual property” stances. Anyway, Bartels mentions the utility in “…capture savings buried in contracts with suppliers and sales or licensing revenues in contracts with customers…” right-on except I take a bit of umbrage on the word “capture.” It reminds me more of the way these systems are marketed… sure you can use the to identify such savings potential, but acting on it is an entirely different story. The main failure point with contract management systems is similar to the failure of many CRM systems, it really requires sweeping organizational process changes. People need to have methods to act on this information and the organization needs to be structured in such a way as to respond to this action.
rEal-mail is Evidence?
19 November 2004 by Adam Cuothe
Susan Kuchinskas at Internet.com discusses the Microsoft e-mail cover-up exercise
“Now, court documents claim, Burst.com has evidence that Microsoft followed a policy of deliberately destroying e-mail that could be used as evidence against it. Legal documents made public on Wednesday include evidence of a 1995 “do-not-save-e-mail directive,” and a “30-Day E-Mail Destruction Rule” promulgated by Jim Allchin, group vice president of Platforms.”
Could just be sound management of storage space. Then again, if Google can give the world unlimited e-mail storage forever, one would expect Microsoft to have the cash to do it for its own employees. Maybe it has more to do with Exchange’s capabilities. ;->
In any case, this raises some issues on content and document management, not to mention internal search and taxonomy applications. If companies are going to have to save everything, seems we’ll need to continue improving our internal indexing and management practices. Back to Google and gmail–h’m. Let’s let them inside our companies a little more, maybe the big Gs can help.
The real issue I’d like to point out, is why should we consider e-mail acceptable as evidence? It’s really quite simple to create false e-mails, or hey, look I can print out an e-mail that I just wrote on my word processor and never actually sent, sure looks the same. Does that mean I can make my own evidence as required? Perhaps someone can enlighten me on how this works out in a court.
Oracle Versus PeopleSoft in an Odyssey of the Diseased
18 November 2004 by Adam Cuothe
Lisa DiCarlo of Forbes can talk about challenges:
Executives from each company will continue to present their case to large investors this week. PeopleSoft’s challenge is to convince them that its business plan makes the company’s shares worth significantly more than $24. Oracle’s challenge is to convince them of the exact opposite
It’s not one over the other, both Oracle and PeopleSoft may be deeply diseased in their software sales business. PeopleSoft is stuck in a listless lack of surety because it can’t figure out that the standard software practice it boomed from, won’t survive. Oracle knows it too, but Oracle is more the bear caught in a trap that won’t only gnaw its own leg off, but also rears up and in act of self-preservation attacks everything that comes close to it.
I’ve long had this theory. I say that once upon a time we worshipped heroes, à la ancient Greece. The hero was the ultimate status to attain in society. One day we’d found that situation morphed into the political figure as the ultimate (be he dictator, prime minister, king, or even president). Now it is the CEO and nobody, not even Master Gates, can represent this connection the way Larry Ellison can. My friends, I wish Larry would hire me for a year. Just one year. Just to follow sir Ellison around at all times recording Ellison’s life. That’s what happened with some of those old heroes. Then I’d compose an epic on Ellison, The Ellisiad? Ouch, not that. But the time is right, we’re in for some real tragedy on a large scale and I can’t wait to record Ellison’s part in that, because certainly, it will be dramatic.
Oracle is fast trying to buy up everything in an attempt to beat down the Microsofts, IBMs, and SAPs–but that’s not gonna work for that pony. PeopleSoft thinks it can latch on to a hardware vendor or two, old-school style… nope. Both haven’t got what it takes when they try to embrace open source–and that is the real issue of their downfall. It’s deep inside, these are companies that are unlikely to adapt. Maybe they should take a lesson from Novell.
Another Government Organization Pushing Open Source
11 November 2004 by Adam Cuothe
Sean Gallagher at eWeek says
Sun Microsystems Inc. announced Wednesday that the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has selected its Java Desktop System to be part of a ministry initiative to promote the use of open-source desktops in educational institutions. The initiative is part of METI’s efforts to stimulate the growth of an open-source community within Japan and competitive alternatives to Microsoft Corp. on the desktop.
Why are so many governments trying to push open source? Hong Kong, Germany, India, California, China, the list goes on, every day there is an announcement about a government deciding to migrate to open source Microsoft alternatives. A better question is when will this cease to be newsworthy? I know I know, I’m contributing to it all by writing this little screed, but I’m asking about the end. See I think it’s rather obvious that a government would push open source. Open source is by nature a public activity and governments are by nature publ… no wait, they’re controlled by, who? By corporate interests? Well it looks to me like some of those interests, particularly the local ones, could get a little kick from greater freedom in the logic industry. I mean to say that software and its little intricacies (like can you use it to record new forms of media without asking the US media moguls permission? Like can you do a major set of upgrades on your corporate PCs without having to reinstall Microsoft’s little joys all over again? Do you really have any control over anything you’ve paid for?) is dictated by the Redmond dicks and that ultimately isn’t a very secure path to future success for many of the world’s local logic laborers. If a government gets open source into the schools they raise a generation guaranteeing the future likelihood that their businesses, public interests, and security is in their own hands. Rising sun and setting sun–so happy together.
Roll-in the PCM
10 November 2004 by Adam Cuothe
Good points from P.J. Jakovljevic: Mainstream Enterprise Vendors Begin to Grasp Content Management
Enterprises are becoming painfully aware of the need to clean up their structured data and unstructured content acts to capitalize on more important efforts like regulatory compliance, globalization, demand aggregation, and supply chain streamlining.
It’s about time. Just the other day I was fretting over momentous tracking processes in the physical realm with new RFID gadgetry, but what about the corresponding information side? So much content and information to manage–everything manages its own or connects to some source, or does it? PCM and PIM are starting to feel like little bubbles emerging from a big tub of soapy water–getting closer to other bubbles they suddenly connect and become one. Let’s hope a management scenario for information works as clearly.
You Can't Make Money from Open Source?
8 November 2004 by Adam Cuothe
1. Open For Business
2. OpenMFG
3. ComPiere
“Consider that Free and open source software models, as opposed to the traditional proprietary models, may afford end user organizations a direct line to getting the software that is most well-adapted to their specific needs and at a lower cost. If that tends to be the case, one should ask how it is that the groups providing Free and open source enterprise software model their businesses to support that notion.”
I found this series of interviews by J. Chalifour at a web site called the Free and Open Source Evaluation Center. The interviewer ran an overly long series of open-ended conversations with the founders of three prominent open source enterprise projects. Truth-be-told one of them, OpenMFG, isn’t open source so it’s a bit disingenuous to include them… still they seem to do everything on top of open source systems. Ok, so, one does ask how it is that groups providing FOSS do model their businessesses. People ask me all the time, why anyone would think selling open source software is a good idea. Of course they typically laugh it off as ridiculous before I get a chance to say anything interesting. But the proof that such businesses can be successful is overwhelming and I find it ridiculous that so few “C” level business people will pause for a moment to pay attention to this economic phenomenon. If nothing else, these interviews show three rather different approaches to fostering an active business based on a wide net of potential customers. Examine them carefully!
