http://www.bestbizware.com/ Business Software - A discussion of business software applications, enterprise wide solutions, new and current software for managing a business, such as inventory, accounting, payroll, etc. en Copyright 2008 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:40:04 -0700 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.34 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Day by day over the last several years, social media has been creeping into the lives of million of us. This addition to our lives, whether purposefully or not, has been doing an excellent job of preparing the way for our ultra-connected future computing paradigm. The various forms of social media, from Digg to Twitter to Plurk, have been burrowing into our lifestyles, changing the way we spend our time and how we view our lives.

Some of the changes wrought by the Web have been slow and steady, like our move away from shopping via catalog to shopping on line. Others have been lightning fast, like the adoption of micro-blogging on Twitter and now on Plurk, or the use of StumbleUpon or Mixx to find content that we are interested in. We are being ensnared by social media in more ways that we can imagine.

The people that are using social media heavily are a younger demographic, generally under 40. As the population continues to fill with computer-savvy young adults, the number of people online and involved with social media sites will continue to grow. And, as the social media site interfaces get better (a la Plurk) these sites get stickier, leading more people to spend more time on line.

All of us that participate in social media are being conditioned to spend more time on the web and less time in non-virtual pursuits. The feedback loops in social media are very strong. We are lured by knowledge, variety, and discovery every time we use StumbleUpon. We are drawn into the front-page-or-bust competitions every time we use Digg. We are drawn into instant friendships on Twitter and Plurk at every visit.

All of these avenues are used to sell to us by marketing professionals. There are, of course, the ads on the sites that we see, but there are also advertising campaigns being run every day on Facebook, MySpace, and StumbleUpon. As more of us spend more time on line, the use of social media marketing will become more profitable, and will therefore increase. That, of course, is no different than other pursuit in which we engage.

More tomorrow...
]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/social_media_prepares_us_for_t.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/social_media_prepares_us_for_t.html Future ComputingBusinessMarketingMicrobloggingSocial MediaSoftware Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:40:04 -0700 As we become more and more connected to our business associates and our friends, we are going to become increasingly dependent on social media, that ubiquitous blend of networking and marketing that runs through almost everything we do on line. We keep up with our friends and our clients on social media sites, and trade information with an increasing blend of business and social connections. This is interpersonal networking at the limits of the capabilities of the internet. Just ask Twitter.

From students walking in groups, but all talking on their cell-phones, to sites like Plurk, Twitter, and Facebook, we are already enmeshed in a web of mixed business and personal communications throughout most of our waking days and nights. We explore the world on StumbleUpon, Mixx, and Digg. We are entertained and informed via YouTube, iTunes, and the blogosphere.

Over the last very few years, a majority of our citizens have been turned into netizens, with daily routines that are connected almost as much to their virtual lives as they are to their brick-and-mortar lives. Some of us (and I certainly include myself) have gone well over the dividing line. We shop online. We get our news on line. We often have more “friends” on line than we have in the increasingly-misnamed “real world.”

As the speed and portability of our computing improves, this dependence on the virtual is going to increase. When our brains are connected to other brains by the global network, there is going to be very little difference between our virtual and the non-virtual lives, save the ever-important factor of actual physical contact. Meanwhile, day by day, we are being trained to increasingly consider the virtual world as closer and closer to the real world.

Tomorrow: How social media is changing our real lives.]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/networking_connections_and_peo.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/networking_connections_and_peo.html Future ComputingBusinessComputingSocial MediaSoftwareVirtual Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:08:58 -0700 The future of business (and personal) computing is writ large on the wall. Smaller, faster devices, virtual invisibility, cloud computing, planetary WiFi, and so on are going to be the order of the day, sooner than later. These all seem like positive features of  the future, but they could come at some significant costs. These costs need to be mitigated as we work out way into the fully wired future.

Security needs to be much better than it is. If all of our personal and corporate data is going to be living on the great server in the sky, we need to be sure that it is safe. Those servers need to be secure at levels that are only a dream today, as does the programming that transports the data back and forth from the cloud and you. We can't have the vulnerabilities of Windows, certainly, and either a super-secure *nix is the answer, or perhaps a totally new operating system, almost undoubtedly Open Source.

Privacy concerns need to be addressed, as well. If it will be possible for you to be connected 24/7, it will need to become possible to have total control over your on-line availability. “No” needs to really mean “NO!” If you work, you will need to be available, just as you are now, some part of the time. But you cannot have the boss butting into your life whenever she wants to. The same is true of friends and family. We need tools that make it possible to control the access that everyone has to us.

These things are not there now because we have never really needed them before. In a few years, we will need rigid security, persona privacy avatars, and all of the tools that make those things possible. When those tools are needed, somebody will provide them. Technology is an amazing animal, and it tends to provide what we need, when we need it. Once the security and privacy tools are in place, the future computing revolution will begin in ernest.]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/the_curses_of_future_computing.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/the_curses_of_future_computing.html Future ComputingBusinessCloud ComputingComputingOpen SourceSoftware Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:04:57 -0700 It is hard not to wonder how close the future of business computing and software will be to invisible. With a powerful computer the size of an iPhone, cloud computing, and new input / output devices, will we even know if someone is plugged in to the Net or not? The truth is that we may not.

First, we will probably see smaller and more portable devices. Perhaps roll-up keyboards and monitors will make an appearance, or maybe we will use input devices like current cell phone texting keyboards, or voice control. Maybe we will have a tiny monitor that will drop down in front of one eye, or a tiny projector that will display our data in the inside of a pair of glasses.

Not too far down the road, the way neurological research is gathering data on the brain, will be more direct connections. Certainly sub-vocalizing hardware could be used to allow us to talk to the computer inaudibly, with an earpiece completing the Input / output loop together with the eyepiece. A few small pieces of hardware will take us a long ways.

But science is also moving us in the direction of a truly direct connection to our computers. Once we have the brain fully mapped, it will be possible to implant a WiFi I/O device (perhaps in the back of the neck) that will allow us to see and hear our information, and to think commands, so that we will not need any visible hardware at all. Perhaps the only clue that someone is interacting with a computer will be a slightly distracted look...]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/the_invisible_future.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/the_invisible_future.html Future ComputingBusinessCommunicationiPhoneNetSoftwareWeb Mon, 21 Jul 2008 07:50:47 -0700 It is hard to think of the business software and hardware infrastructure without thinking about the people in IT that support it all. You don't see them much until you need them, but when you need them you REALLY need them! There is a new report out from Goldman Sachs, based on interviews with corporate CIOs, that we may see fewer IT folks around during the coming year, which could be a very bad thing when we need them.

The study finds that the demand for IT personnel is the lowest in the forty-one year history of this executive survey. A companion survey indicates that these same CIOs plan to spend less money on new hardware and software this year, as well. It looks like the watchword of the year is economy rather than technology. These surveys combine to show a bleak picture of investment in technology in the coming year, and it was warned that hardware, software and service companies should look at the report as an early warning of a less than stellar 2009.

In the details of the report, it was noted that the companies would be paring many more contractors than direct company employees. While about 15% of respondents project that they will cut employees, almost half think that they will cut contractors. All told, our worsening economy looks like it will be taking a serious toll on IT spending.]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/it_spending_to_fall.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/it_spending_to_fall.html EconomyBusinessContractorsEconomyEmployeesITSoftware Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:31:24 -0700 In what I think is an unusual move, the Gartner Group is recommending that companies, cities, and other organizations don't spend any more money on WiMax, saying that we should wait until there are more WiMax receivers in the field. Is Gartner trying to hold this technology down on purpose? The spread of handsets and infrastructure are tied irrevocably together. A recommendation like this from a major name in the industry would do a lot to insure that this popular worldwide technology never catches on in the US.

There are millions of WiMax users in Asia who love the technology. It is pretty obvious that it works. Telling people not to install the infrastructure is a sure way to keep WiMax handsets away as well, since there is no incentive to introduce and sell handsets unless we are going to install the technology infrastructure. It is a case of chicken and egg, and Gartner may be insuring that that particular chicken never crosses the road. Call me cynical, but I would love to see how this particular study came about! Was it a sponsored study? What are the competing technologies? Who stands to lose money if Wimax is adopted here? Questions, questions, do I have questions!]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/wait_dont_install_wimax_not.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/wait_dont_install_wimax_not.html CommunicationsBusinessHardwareInfrastructureSoftwareWiMax Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:07:07 -0700 A recent article in the Economist concurs with the case that we have been making here about the infrastructure needed for the business computing model of the future. The article quotes IDC figures that indicate that there are more than 7,000 large data centers in the US alone, and this is obviously a worldwide phenomenon. The number of centers spread across the globe must be impressive, indeed. And these are not small centers. They are, as the Economist says, “the size of several football pitches.” That's big.

Many of these data centers are being in order to allow global access of data from the clouds, an integral part of our future business computing paradigm. The investment required by this data infrastructure is incredibly large. It is not just the buildings, and the people, and the computers, it is also the mega-bandwidth connections required and the provision of power to the enterprise. These centers are not conjecture; they are being built now.

So, if you have had the thought while reading the articles so far in this series that it all sounds like a pipe dream, ask yourself if a bevy of major corporations would be investing collective billions of dollars in such a pipe dream. These dollars are hard to come by, and are not likely to be thrown away. They are being spent now, well before the fact, in order to be there when the cloud computing revolution occurs.

That is how you can be sure that the revolution is going to occur.
]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/huge_investments_in_data.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/huge_investments_in_data.html Future ComputingBusinessCloud ComputingHardwareServersSoftware Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:08:08 -0700 Looking at our radically different future computing paradigm, and at the freedom that it should bring so many of us, we must think of where all of the programs are going to come from. Are that likely to come from legacy shops like Microsoft and IBM? Hardly. There are heavily invested in the current paradigm, and will likely remain there. The basis for a new way of doing things usually comes from new places and our business computing future will be no different.

The future of business computing is going to require innovation above all else. If you look around the software world, you will find that many of the innovations that have changed the way we view computers and ourselves have come from the Open Source community. I don't use the word community lightly. Most Open Source development represents community at it's finest.

The programmers on open source projects, for the most part, have day jobs. They do what they are doing because they like it, not because they are getting paid. The people that write Open Source software are the same people that write commercial software, by and large. After writing software all day for a living, they come to open source projects to enjoy what they are doing, and to invent the future.

Open Source projects are not bound by the bottom line. In truth, there are very few boxes drawn around this programming community. They write their own programming languages, and build their own platforms. They code their own databases. And they write new ideas into reality in their spare time. Open Source projects are where the really new ideas are being translated into fact.  They are where our computing future is coming from.

Support them where you can, any way you can.
]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/our_open_source_future.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/our_open_source_future.html Future ComputingBusinessIBMMicrosoftOpen SourceSoftware Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:53:07 -0700 One of my social media friends has reminded me that not everyone would be happy to see the office disappear as a result of the new business computing paradigm. I could be described as a loner, and fairly self-sufficient, at that. I do not dislike the time I spend with people, but find that I like social hour better at the espresso shop than at the office. So, for me, the loss of the everyday togetherness that I described here does not seem like much of a sacrifice. If I feel a little lonely, I'll go out to coffee.

But Deb reminded me that not everyone feels that way. For a lot of people, a job is as much a social experience as it is anything else. I think that this may be especially true for women, but I could be wrong and will surely be reminded of it if I am. :) The sense of togetherness at the office means a great deal to some people, but there would be ways to compensate for what some people see as a loss.

To me, the positive personal and environmental considerations of not having offices and commutes to offices are just too great to be ignored. We need to find other  ways of having the together-time that we need. We could certainly meet once a week, maybe in geographically close groups, and maybe monthly at a central location for an all-hands. There are plenty of places that get little daytime use, and which would make excellent hosting locations.

I also know that some people are already forming relationships with co-workers that live close to them. I know of three customer service reps for a Web hosting company that share a dining room table on a rotating basis. I know a number of researchers that travel sort distances to work with co-workers. I think more and more of that will happen. And maybe if there was less socializing at work, you would have more of it left for the family.
]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/not_enough_face_time.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/not_enough_face_time.html Future ComputingBudinessCommuteEnvironmentHardwareOfficeSoftware Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:18:35 -0700 Yahoo! is experiencing what it must be like to be a reseller of Microsoft products, as Microsoft continues to bludgeon the internet portal owner with blackjacks, baseball bats, and bricks. Now Microsoft has teamed up with Carl Icahn to see if the two of them can deliver enough body blows to force Yahoo! into submission, regardless of what Yahoo!, its shareholders, or anyone else thinks.

This is a stunning display of the worst of the modern world corporate philosophies: “The hell with everybody else, I just care about me!” Yahoo!, which projects a happy-go-lucky image most of the time, would appear to be in big trouble in the ring, in dire need of a corner man that is good with cuts and bandages. Corporate ghouls have no mercy.

A Yahoo! owned by Microsoft would likely be a Yahoo! without a soul, brought to you by the same people who have become the masters of spin while simultaneously losing their software innovation mojo. I am not personally a huge fan of Yahoo! or its product line. I just don't like to the the not-so-bad guys getting beat up by the bad guys.
]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/to_hell_with_everybody_else.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/to_hell_with_everybody_else.html Business Software MarketplaceBulliesBusinessIcahnMicrosoftSoftwareYahoo Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:57:23 -0700 The infrastructure needs of business computing are daunting, even today. But is is not only hardware specifications that are exploding; consider the places that will be required to put data that is almost geometrically growing as a result of the information revolution. Even as disk drive capacities double and quadruple, the need for storage space grows even faster.

Major corporations and storage capacity vendors are running almost flat out in their attempt to keep up with the demand for data storage space. The speed at which raw information is growing is incredible enough, but we are no longer storing just words and numbers, which are fairly efficient in terms of space required. Much of today's storage is in graphic, audio, and video formats which requires a great deal more space.

The way that we store data today is space and energy consumptive at levels that boggle the mind. Once, the NSA was infamous for measuring its data farms in acres. Now, there are a number of private companies that can measure that type of capacity in square miles, even with the incredible advances made in storage density. For all these reasons, our new future business computing paradigm needs to consider storage methods that are much denser and energy efficient.

Computer scientist are  thinking not only of denser standard storage materials, but also of different kind of materials. There are very high hopes for holographic storage, and even things like purpose-grown vegetable matter have been mentioned. One of the leading contenders is nano-built tube and rod storage, closing in on binary storage at the atomic level.

It is good that these technologies are coming, and that they are both more dense and faster, with data sizes growing at more than the current Moore's Law rate. From an environmental point of view, the news is even better, since these new technologies require much less power than today's disk drives. It is apparent that our business computing future must also hold innovative storage technologies, and that computer scientists are up to the task.
]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/future_computing_where_to_stor.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/future_computing_where_to_stor.html Future ComputingBusinessHardwareHolographyNanotechnologySoftwareStorage Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:09:34 -0700 Although the iPhone has some shortcomings, today's sales launch (and the surrounding ridiculous hype) does a good job of supporting some of the points in this future computing series. The iPhone is small and it packs a lot of power in that small package. Perfect, no. True portable computing, no. But it still represents a lot of power in a tiny package, and it is easy to see that people are very excited about it.

That's because it is bright and shiny and new, well designed and well marketed. But is is also because it is more than a phone. It does email. It does Web browsing. It does videos. It does music. It does all of that with a friendly user interface and on a screen you can see clearly on. It is inexpensive for what it does, and it may be one of the world's ultimate toys.

Still, it is a toy that does real work. People are excited by both sides of this equation, and they will continue to be excited by advances made in this area. Truly mobile, fully connected business computing will also have an aspect of the toy about it, especially for those used to older, bigger, multiple devices with less capability.

Looked at from this angle, the new iPhone might be the first in a long line of portable computing devices to really pique the interest of the user. It is already mainly there. The rest is just further miniaturization and innovative input-output devices. What we are seeing now is just the first step, though with too much hype and the ridiculous issue of falsely created scarcity. If Apple is just in it for the hype, we will need somebody else to step up and do the heavy lifting of creating the first truly portable business computing dynamo.

Still, this first step proves that people are interested, and will stay interested, especially if the marketers will quit treating them like morons. The public wants this, and they want much, much more. The technology is there to give it to them. Someone just has to take this matter seriously, and not as just a marketing prank, and begin to give people the ultra-mobile business platform of tomorrow.
]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/is_the_iphone_the_leading_edge.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/is_the_iphone_the_leading_edge.html Future ComputingBusinessHardwareiPhoneSoftware Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:57:22 -0700 Imagine that we are set up in the future computing paradigm that we have been working with for the last week or so. You have one device in your pocket or purse that will allow rapid access to all of your business and personal information, all using secure worldwide WiFi. You can therefore do your information industry or other white-collar job, and handle the rest of your life's activities, from anywhere, on the go. Will you like it?

Every researcher would have all of their information and all of their contacts available, all the time. Every salesperson would have inventory, pricing, availability, and client contact information at his fingertips from poolside. Every manager would have access to her entire team, all of their activities and all of their metrics, 24 by 7. Every customer service rep could work from home and still be tied together with their entire team and every bit of information they need to do their jobs.

Is there a price to pay for this? Sure there is. There is always a price. People could know where you were and what you were doing, pretty much all of the time you were supposed to be working. The people that matter would be able to see at a glance how well you are doing your job. The customer would know that you were being less than transparent if you failed to share information. Everybody would be a little bit more under a thumb, either the boss's or the client's, than they are now, during some portions of the day.

But with these negatives would come some positives. You could work smarter and more efficiently. Improved privacy controls would limit your exposure to scrutiny. There would be no more office, no more commute. You would have more time, not less. How do you think you would feel about living in the future business computing paradigm? Leave us a comment!

Tomorrow: will we be people-deprived?]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/could_you_handle_complete_conn.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/could_you_handle_complete_conn.html Future ComputingBusinessHardwareSecuritySoftwareWiFi Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:02:03 -0700 One of the other ramifications of constant business connectedness, made possible by new and innovative hardware and cloud-based software, should be a positive effect on the environment. For openers, if you have everything you need to do your job at your fingertips and completely portable, why do you need an office?

The answer is, in most cases, you don't. Any reasonable business computing paradigm of the future will include provisions for Web meetings, and I think we can plan on spending a lot of time in them. Some things never change. But you won't have to drag yourself down to the office to participate. Call in from where you are, with full audio, video and collaboration functionality. You will still be able to keep track of how bald your boss is getting. And if you don't need an office, we can stop using resources to keep two places (home and office) climate conditioned for you.

If you don't need a physical presence in the office, you don't need to get there, either. So we can quit wasting resources on commuting. No more wasted time, no more wasted barrels of oil, no more everyday travel hassle. At the same time, these smaller computing devices use a lot less power, and we may be able to make do with solar, getting your computing completely off the grid.

Yes, I know that we need to re-educate bosses and owners. They need to learn that performance metrics are what is important, not seat time in a central office chair. And with our new constant business connectedness potential, our performance metrics can go through the roof while we work fewer hours per day. We can have the best of both worlds by just using the technology appropriately.

The reality is that only time you really need to be in the same physical location as most of you co-workers is at the regular company retreats, which are not held in an office anyway. Some face time is required for people to feel like they are members of the team. But we need to stop wasting copious amounts of resources for every office worker on the planet just to satisfy the paranoia and control urges of the boss. We can stick it to the man by doing our jobs efficiently and saving the planet at the same time.
]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/future_business_computing_can.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/future_business_computing_can.html Future ComputingBusinessEnvironmentHardwareOfficeSoftware Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:31:46 -0700 The business computers and software of the future are going to allow us to be more efficient than we have ever been before. At lightning speed, we will have access to all of the information necessary to do our jobs. There is a price to pay for this, of course. Our jobs will simultaneously have instant access to us, as will our family and friends. We have talked a little bit about this problem in the last few days, but it deserved some space of its own.

Psychologists and business observers have already found over-connectedness to be a problem. At some tipping point, different for every person, information overload takes a toll on information workers, especially. Simply put, there is too much information and not enough respite from it. This is already a problem, and we have not even begun to see the ultimate paradigm in business and personal connectedness.

When the day comes that it is possible to be connected to everything, 24 / 7, we will have to learn to disconnect. We will have to learn not to react to the phone, the boss, and email like Pavlov's dogs. We will have to learn to say “not now!” On the other side of the equals sign in this equation, other people are going to have to learn not to take advantage of our connectedness.

We are already being taken advantage of, many of us, by bosses, business associates and acquaintances. Friends and family, of course, should know better, and already have some respect for your rights. Similarly, we are all going to have to learn some respect for ourselves and our needs outside the business-driven portions of our lives. We have to learn when enough is enough.

I don't know what the actual number is, nor does anyone else, but the computer has already made information workers at least ten times more efficient. The new business computing paradigm will double that, at least. We have to draw the line somewhere, and I say we draw it before true connectedness begins. I say that we are just about as efficient, right now, as our bosses have any right to expect.

When we begin to see the ultimate hardware and software, in the very near future, let us use them to cut our workdays down to 8-10 hours a day from the horrendous pace at which we are living  today. Then, let's hold out for doing our jobs better in 6-8 hours, and then in 4-6. If we let them, the people that we work for will suck us dry in an age of true communications and data efficiency. Don't let them do it.]]> http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/how_connected_is_too_connected.html http://www.bestbizware.com/2008/07/how_connected_is_too_connected.html Future ComputingBusinessEfficiencyHardwareOver-ConnectedSoftware Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:49:29 -0700