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The http://tru-evalmethod.blogspot.com has moved to the Eval-Source website. All previous posts have been moved to the blog page on our site.   Continue to check for new posts. 


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Would you a like beverage with that installation ?

As IT costs of installation, support and the services that IT provides seem overly difficult to track with regards to a dollar value a new way is being proposed. 
It seems that organizations have a difficult time measuring the cost of their IT department.  There are 3 common ways that It cost is measured today.  An article here that explains the 3 ways and a possible new way to "serve it up" Ways IT gets funded.
Our interpretation of this methodology is that IT must come up with a price list similar to that of a menu in which are the array of services they provide can be costed out.  The implications of this are that IT must categorize its services by organization as to the most common tasks they do and support for the organization with enough dollar value granularity to make it accurate for accounting purposes.


In this scenario common support for hardware,software, upgrades, the cost of installing and configuring and administrating a new system, integration, development, testing, are all component costs that will have to be valued on this new menu.   The article mentioned above recommends that all IT services be broken down into 12-24 items with actual prices.  This seems manageable.


As organization consume IT services, IT would then give them a bill for the cost of that service. This can then either be charged to department, project or overall IT costs for the organization.  This methodology may not be too bad as this could provide actual costs of IT's involvement in projects, which departments consume the most services, which employees, and identify anomalies that might ordinarily be missed.  Overall it seems reasonable in the fact of how IT can get funding for new projects as costs will be identified accurately and incorporated into projects as a component of the overall project expense - but more accurate.


If this methodology were to catch on then the only problem organizations would have is how to categorize and actually come up with a costing method for the diverse services that IT provides.  An example of this would be is an architect worth more per hour in designing the overall infrastructure of the business as opposed to the support of hardware, software and administration of environments, applications, installing patches and updates, configuration for software, development for interfaces of new systems, user testing etc.  


All though this makes sense in theory will it translate to actionable and usable data to get IT projects funded.  If its not one problem its another.  Looking forward to feedback on this if you think this approach can work or not.   I can reached at info@eval-source.com

Lesson learned from improper software evaluation

There are many reasons for a failed implementation and today's blog post will highlight a few lessons learned from not doing a proper software evaluation.  A methodology that is clear, concise, systematic and provides qualitative results are the starting point to avoid these mishaps during a software implementation - after all it starts with an evaluation leading towards software selection. 

Lessons learned from not placing the correct importance on this step have far reaching and sometimes detrimental effects if not done properly.  A few lessons learned from our past experiences on not using a methodology for selecting software and some of the consequences are listed below.

• Strategic Fit: A company that had just engaged us in an evaluation. It turns out the company's CEO was coming back from a business trip and as luck would have it he was sitting next to an SAP account executive.  After several hours of speaking with SAP it was decided by the CEO that this was the system that they selected and the evaluation process was subsequently scrapped. This was a mid-sized company and they were sold the Enterprise Business Suite.  After implementation was completed a follow up with company revealed that the system was too large for their capacity.  The external scope creep, clouding of objectives, management of the project (both internal and externally), budget over-runs, time delays  and administration proved to be problematic in this installation.  It turned out that SAP was too much of a resource drain on this particular company for financial resources, people and essentially paying for what was not used.   The lesson here strategic vendor fit, and software fit are crucial when selecting enterprise software.   

• Wrong system type:  We had a customer contact us about how slow their ERP system was.  We had tried some database tuning techniques to speed up the system.  This proved this was a slow and costly process as outside programming help was needed to tune the proprietary database.  This however did speed up their ERP but that still was not the problem.  After speaking with the company in more detail we discovered they were sold a discrete ERP type system and they were indeed a contract manufacturer as their core business. The ERP they had selected was not the correct fit for what they had set out to accomplish originally. The lesson here is don't let scope creep or a fancy vendor demo win you over, stick to your guns.

• Unnecessary vendor disqualification:  A lesson learned from doing a proper software evaluation is that do not withhold information on how you run your business to vendors.  After all vendors are future business partners not just suppliers.  The vendor would also like for you to be a customer who is truly happy with their software purchase and can be used a reference site.  When organizations hold back information and see if the vendor can fill in the blanks within their industry and own company can disqualify a very capable vendor.  A best practice here is to fully disclose what your needs are so that the vendor can guide you as well as put forth their best effort to solve what you are looking for. 

• Previous selection experience becomes the method for evaluation:  A common mistake made by organizations is that people who have been through a software selection at previous companies become the subject matter expert for the software evaluation. Often a familiarity will introduce biases (political, organizational, technical) in the evaluation process. An evaluation procedure is a procedure that precedes the implementation.  This is a certain set of skills validated with a proven method that drives consistent results to finding the right software for your company.  While someone with previous experience is a valuable tool it should be added in conjunction with a proper systematic method of software selection.  If also that person were to leave for another company as is now quite common you may be stuck with system that does not have full support and does not meet the original intended requirements.  The lesson here is take under advisement the previous experience and add that  to the methodology of software selection to create a full functional roadmap for the selection process.

As can be seen there are many reasons why companies struggle with software selection but hopefully these lessons learned can help mitigate some of your own dilemmas and make you more successful at selecting the correct enterprise software for your business. 

Actual Cloud Spending - fact or fiction - you decide

Gartner released their numbers for the estimates of the cloud computing market and looking at the number it seems way high to me.  That could be possibly be because of what is included within their definition we do not consider part of the cloud market.  The IDC numbers of predicted cloud marketshare seem very reasonable as to the breakdown they used for the estimate of their own market size for cloud products and services.

While I do not disagree that cloud is a fast growing market and looks to rapidly increase over the next few years (which we agree with) it seems that the estimate has surpassed the current ERP market.  This is also in-line with Meryll Lynch estimates for market valuations  of the cloud computing.

In many reports and articles posted a lot of C-level executives are expecting to investigate cloud computing options and possibly invest in such.  Although that is what they are saying is the market moving that rapidly really?   Are the executives actually spending that money they say they will on cloud or is it speculation to give those services and applications consideration within the evaluation process. The hype surrounding this market may be just that rather than actual spend on cloud applications and services.  Is all this speculation actually translating into spend within the cloud and translation of a growing marketshare. 

An informal scan of the current material available of online resources and publications of vendors posted should imply that cloud applications and services are being signed left right an center and in record numbers to surpass the current market numbers for ERP.  Many companies would have to sign cloud contracts and services with multi-year SLA's totaling millions and into the billions of dollars at a fast and furious rate.  I guess this will always be a point of contention between analysts. 

I am looking forward to feedback from the communities on this issue at www.twitter.com/eval_source or info@eval-source.com

CRM’s new extension........Social CRM

What does the term "Social CRM"  mean ?  As defined by some wisdom from fellow advocate Paul Greenberg Social CRM Definition

We prefer Paul Greenberg’s definition of Social CRM, which he summarizes as:

“CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.” (also read his 2009 review of this space on ZDnet)

CRM has evolved to incorporating a social aspect by adding the features and functions of most popular social networking sites.  Contact management now includes customer interaction, internal and external collaboration, locating experts, soliciting feedback, extended customer service are some of the social aspects taht are evolving out of of traditional CRM with social components.

One of the problems faced by organizations is how to incorporate these benefits of SCRM and manage it accordingly. These problems stem from additional administration, storage and retrieval, meta-tagging, archiving and content management are a few additional extra pieces that are added to social CRM.     

Traditional CRM vendors are trying to adapt to this new business model and this new enterprise created software.  As put by fellow analyst  Jeremy Owyang SCRM vendors are not cutting the mustard.  There are a few categories that are mainly considered social CRM

1. Traditional CRM with Social integration 
2. Community platforms offering CRM
3. Brand monitoring offering social CRM
4. Social media with Twitter capabilities
5. Social Customer experience
6. Sales 2.0 and Social graph aggregation
7. CRM applications and plug-ins
8. Social networks and others

These are considered the main categories in social CRM.  As organizational usage increases and evolves to newer, integrated and collaborative sharing vendors will be playing catch-up for a little while until this market matures a little bit.  Then mobility on top of this is a rapid evolution that will occur within this software arena and how they react may affect marketshare and success in this area.  As any software matures newer vendors will enter and traditional vendors will be at an advantage more towards the brand recognition side of the software market.  

With whatever changes occur in this space from the market and organizational usage evolves and differs from company to company it still becomes an exercise in finding the best fit for the organization and catering to the specific functions you are looking to solve.  A software evaluation methodology will still need to be considered as it just keeps getting more complicated and sometimes unnecessarily so. This is a software name that is ahead of the actual software being delivered for now.  


Organizations should create, review, monitor social network strategies and policies as there is no magic formula to convert buzz to ROI and money for the business.  Sure there are many ways to do convert buzz but is that an included part of the strategy?  This can be detrimental as well as it creates a possible time wasting scenario as perceived by C-level employees.  

If you feel we forgotten a category feel free to contact us at info@eval-source.com or for vendor briefings for your CRM product.  Also see our related post platform provides foundation for growing your business - Well maybe

Two Next-gen technology approches for ERP

In an effort to rid the term ERP even SAP is digressing away from the term they are credited of creating.  New IDC research shows that SMB organizations do not have the agility to compensate for their quickly changing business environments a main ERP problem from the old monolithic suites. 


The next-gen ERP products being created as we speak are addressing these concerns and are being adopted by customers with less vendor interaction after the sale.  These next-gen platforms allows organizations quickly create new processes, reconfigure and tweak existing processes that may have changed.  


By speaking with our customers lately, one of things they are looking for is the ability for the system to include agility based on business practices.  This has gained more prominence in the last several months as SaaS vendors , applications and services become more available. 


There are several approaches to take when evaluating agility in software applications.  Mentioned below are a couple that you may find useful. 

• PaaS - Platform as a Service - this allows you to build your ERP by creating a common SOA  platform that allows you to add applications built on that platform by either the same vendor or several different vendors.  Usually integration is a little more difficult but with vendors using the preset API's provided by the platform creators makes it it a little more simple to employ.  An issue that may become apparent using this approach is the different vendors that support each task or module is there a common support practices strategy ?   Examples of this are Force.com, Amazon, Zoho.com etc. 

• SOA by vendor - this usually consists of a vendor providing the platform and configuring its software as you require.  This is the more common approach now as vendors have started to deploy this methodology as well.   Most vendors provide you with the modules and functionality you require and as you need more from them to enhance functionality they "turn on" the rest of what is required.  This provides a little easier implementation path and allows the organization a quicker approach to utilize the new functionality when switched on.

We are also looking for feedback on what the new term that describes the entire enterprise software environment within a company moving away from the term ERP ?  Any thoughts can be emailed to info@eval-source.com

Increase ERP implementation success rates - using change management

So now you have decided to purchase enterprise software and have made the selection of what software you are to purchase how can you increase the chances of making your implementation a success ?  You have done the basics correctly by including the staff, soliciting feedback and gone through an extensive selection procedure.  What are the next steps in ensuring your organization will use the software and realize its full benefits ? 


An often overlooked factor that organizations do not place enough importance on is the change management strategy within the organization.  It is key for the organization to educate its employees on the impact of the new software and how it will impact the organization and then individuals.  The change management strategy should reside at the top of the organization and should perpetuate downwards.  As part of the change management strategy, includes executive buy-in.  This will demonstrate leadership and confidence within the organization. Employees will have a better outlook and forward looking picture which provides stability and should increase productivity. 


Employees at all levels should be educated as to how their job will change and the tools that will enable them to become more productive and contribute to the organization even more.  Not only are individual tasks taught but transactions are completed, handed off to other departments, accessibility of real-time information, the overall flow, where in the process improvements can occur,  are all things that should be included in the change management strategy.


These are points that should help you define and execute a change management strategy which will help increase your Enterprise software success.  This overlooked piece of the implementation puzzle can either make or break your software project.  So increase your chances and incorporate this piece within your implementation roadmap procedures.       

Lessons learned from Airbus A380

As we continue to live in an ever changing world and a more global economy emerges companies are now forced to examine how to global trade.  As organizations continue to source from abroad inventory control and visibility has taken more precedence than ever before.  Near-shore, offshore and outsourced services have caused organizations find ways to control and reduce costs.


If your procurement occurs abroad and so does the manufacturing it is imperative that the right hand know what the left hand is doing.  A solution that supports your business practices of checking supplier quality standards, adherence to regulatory compliance,  adherence to service level agreements, current volume of inventory in the chain, current expected quantity are all factors that require very close vendor collaboration to run smoothly.  Then there is the transportation component and calculations of lead times, customs clearances to deal with, port storage and finally transportation to your warehouse or point of sale locations. 


Organizations are not leveraging technology enough to simplify these processes and make the big picture easier.  A simple web-enabled portal that allows for collaboration between for suppliers can easily be created and leveraged.  As lessons learned from the Airbus project of the A380 the technology didn't fail, it was a people-centric process that failed.  All  the information was available however, non stringent standards such as different versions of supplier softwares being installed on different supplier sites(causing incompatible file types and unnecessary delays), people not checking the portal for new specification changes to materials, tolerances, sizes etc. are factors that could have been avoided if the technology was properly used.  The cause and effect in this scenario was really multiplied because if one manufacturer was delayed this impacted the deadline throughout the chain causing the delay to compound throughout the supply chain and manufacturing process.  


When a portal for trade management is used a central repository can be created, viewed and managed effectively.  Updated specifications, new tolerances and other possible delays can be managed to control the process and adapt to the new deadline which will save time in the end.  If a specification were to change, other dependent manufacturers that had to complete the previous part or add something to to complete that part can be adjusted for by possibly preparing pieces that can be made in parallel or possibly to prepare the material for production to save time when receiving the product.       


In the case of Airbus the individual project managers by each part they were responsible failed to understand how the existing information can be used and how it was used caused delays.  Parts suppliers that changed specs failed to report them using the design software and consequently other dependent processes were caught off guard and were forced to accommodate the changes which led to time delays and project overruns. 


Organizations need to ensure at least one PM is in charge of keeping the big picture together and one that understands the local impacts that are manifested globally throughout the system.  All parts of the project plan must be completed, validated and finally executed.  

RFI only does not make an evaluation

In our series of continuing impartial software evaluation coverage, we are pleased to introduce part four of the enterprise software selection best practices, tips and how to's about evaluating and selecting enterprise software. Our three previous posts helps establish a methodology, what to look for and what not to do and beware of the gotcha's.   

Our last three posts on Monday mornings for enterprise software evaluation and selection were:

1. How to increase ERP success  - http://tinyurl.com/yc2m2ud  
2. Outsourced evaluation - Risks and Benefits - http://tinyurl.com/yz37toa
3. Beware of Sytem Integrators Doing Evaluations - http://tinyurl.com/ydak9qj

Within an evaluation process the creation of the RFI although an intricate piece of the evaluation is NOT the only part of the evaluation.  An RFI is also not just a checklist on what your company needs now and future needs.  This only addresses if the vendor is capable of such functionality and important parts such as maintenance, industry expertise, implementation methodology and strategic fit from vendors are often overlooked as crucial elements in the entire software evaluation process. There are several other parts that require the same amount of consideration within the evaluation process that accounts for the rest of the process.  By considering the other portions are given the the same consideration can ensure software selection success.   

Many organizations often fall into the trap of issuing an RFI and that becomes the entire evaluation and selection itself.  The danger of this action is that your selection is based on features and functions only.  Another danger for this approach is the that software evaluation is complicated enough and does not need to be further clouded by unnecessary  and complimentary functionality that often exaggerates the scope of the project and does not solve the original business issue.   As software vendors have come to scratch on common functionality over the years just by selecting an older vendor over a newer vendor may skew your results for evaluating enterprise software.  Comparing features and functions for thousands of individual criterion only complicates the process and usually ends in disaster as the business issue is not readily solved, the reason you are looking to purchase software. 

Vendors that are known for brand recognition are often  selected without a formal evaluation process being executed or someone within the company has used this software elsewhere which introduces political, IT and operational biases. Executives that used the software previously, or the selection is made on  IT's limited experience with one specific software and they are not aware of the entire marketplace which disrupts the evaluation process and does not necessarily solve the reason you were looking to implement the software in the first place. If IT were to leave and the selection was made based upon and RFI recommendation only the organization is left holding the bag and looking for ways to maximize its investment. 

It's imperative that a formal method just for software evaluation be present, and executed not just using the RFI. Vendor demos can be skewed towards the functionality and features only and the real reasons for implementing the software maybe missed.  Also check our website as to how the Smart RFI can simplify this process, save time and money. 

Boeing 787 - Supply Chain ripple effect

Tuesday appearing to be the maiden flight for the new Boeing super aircraft, weather permitting, how ill this change supply chains and innovate manufacturing processes ?   


The new 787 is scheduled for approximately 20% to be Titanium.  Will this extra demand for newer parts also drive manufacturing innovation as surely there will be alloy based parts.   Will the titanium market be able to respond to the increased demand for titanium, how will this influence the titanium prices and will there be enough manufacturers that produce the finished alloys and titanium components needed.  This is all considering the maiden voyage is a success, which I hope it is. 


Will companies innovate with new processes and technologies that will influence the market and eventually drive down cost of these components.  Will supplier quality be upheld and will other aerospace and defense vendors and suppliers work together to better the industry as this could ripple down to even consumer goods.  Other vendors that make buses, trains, automobiles etc. may also benefit from these space age metal technologies and the new supplier knowledge gained from aircraft suppliers, which may cross over to the mainstream a lot quicker than previous years. 


With all the hype and speculation going on about the components of the new parts will other competitors also mimic Boeing specs and continue to ripple through the supply chain with new parts, alloys and technologies will have multiplier effect on suppliers that support Boeing production for its planes.  This may just be the beginning to a new wave of innovation for manufacturing, alloy creation and other benefits that can be gained from such stringently controlled specifications. 

Content Management Systems - All grown up and plenty of places to go

So now your organization has started social media interaction, have acquired many third party applications that interface to your ERP system, how can you manage all this extraneous data?  The problem that this causes for an organization is the unstructured data that this produces.  There are several implications for unstructured data being storage, indexing, tagging, ability to reuse and access data with email are problems an organization will continue to face even more so with the proliferation of social media within the organization. 

Organizations have always had a difficult time to capture the unstructured data contained within email and other forms of informal office communications.  Often valuable information, links, ideas, thought leadership, proprietary company information is shared with no real way to leverage this goldmine of information that is created.  This problem also extends throughout the organization stemming from product design to all the way through the supply chain.  The lack of internal data capture extends to outside the enterprise when social media is invoked. 

Systems that capture data such as PLM systems have started to evolve as the backbone to organizational storage.  The link of storing data and the ability to reuse it has caused some PLM vendors to incorporate content management and PLM functionality. This provides a basis for meta data tagging, indexing, storage, ability to leverage existing intellectual property and reusing company data that should be reusable. 


Enter one evolution of content management system.  These systems can not only store data effectively but store it as usable chunks that can be indexed and readily accessible for many purposes.   These content management systems can be thought of as another weapon to harness business performance.  As these applications spread and start to merge with other applications we are seeing a new evolution of PLM and CMS to start to include social media.  By including this functionality here it may alleviate some concerns about capturing data, customer feedback etc.  It is pretty easy to see as more of these applications evolve and include greater features and functions they are encroaching on the ERP itself.  Ideally, this would be integrated into your ERP and the SOA that acts as the platform would allow the applications to speak freely without interruption.  By providing platform consistency should also allow the UI to be more user friendly and more readily accessible to allow use of all information stored within the system.

Be cautious of system integrators doing software evaluation.

In our continuing series of software evaluation best practices, tips and tricks, today in week three we explore the pitfalls of having a systems integrator doing your software evaluation. 

 

So now that you have decided to evaluate an enterprise software application what now, where to start, what are the steps, what time frame should this take, what is the budget to an evaluation are all questions that should be examined.  When acquiring a potential system that can cost upto 8 figures it only makes sense to make the best decision possible by bringing in experts.  A best practice approach for selecting enterprise software is about the 10% range of the overall implementation cost to be budgeted for the evaluation portion itself.  A small price to pay on something that will shape your company’s competitive nature and affect the way you do business.

System integrators are great as the name suggest for integrating systems and the professional services around implementation.  Consumers should ask themselves, what is their (the systems integrator's) business model, how do these integrators make money, who are they partnered with and are they truly impartial.   Large SI’s are often affiliated with larger software companies and often suggest the packages they are associated with.

 

Although many Si’s have very bright SME’s specific to one line of business they are usually lacking a big picture knowledge for the overall business strategy and how an ERM can solve what the company is looking for.  To that end, big software packages are recommended and are not necessarily the correct fit both strategically and organizationally.  If a company cannot align itself with a proper sized vendor that can accommodate, understand and provide value for the application usually it is not a good fit for the software selected and what was trying to be accomplished.   This often results in too big of a solution for the company.  The company is held victim by not realizing the scope, cost and resource strain that will unduly be put upon the organization if this scenario is carried out. 

By reselling certain software especially the larger tier 1 applications the evaluation tends to favor a certain bias towards aspects of validity and functionality and value towards the software being resold.   Usually a fully documented, tested, structured approach with actual tangible results is often not present as they are not properly quantified.

Software evaluation is an actual skillset that provides the big picture overview with the intent, to find what best suits the client needs.  An evaluator should not sell software nor implement software, that way no biases can exist within the evaluation process.   This best practices approach dramatically increases the customer’s chance of selecting the correct software to solve their business issues.  A company where its core business is enterprise software evaluation will usually be a better choice as the consultants doing the evaluation will have the best interest of the customer at heart when assisting in finding the correct software.   Normally, companies that evaluate enterprise software only are often more familiar with the market and can offer many more viable options to the customer without other compensatory factors that may affect the outcome of the evaluation.   Because of the their market knowledge impartial software evaluators can help you architect your ERM and business platform strategy as they might also be familiar with complimentary software that extends functionality and that are tightly integrated to what you currently will select or that you may already have.  

Remember that software companies don’t want you to be unhappy as they are also looking for happy customers that fit them and can become reference sites for future prospects.  If a software is selected that is not the best fit the horror stories may prove more costly to their reputation as a vendor as word spreads about another unsuccessful implementation. 

Outsourced software evaluation - risks and benefits

In our new series for ongoing  software evaluation we present part two.  Last week was Increasing ERP success rates, this week we examine the advantages on if you should outsource your company's evaluation process. 

Now that you have decided evaluate enterprise software for your organization, what now, how do you go about this and what steps are involved, how long should it take, what do I need to do internally to get buy-in, to get ready to make the correct choice, what sources of information should I trust, which vendors should I trust, how much budget is allocated to the evaluation process  are all questions that should be asked from the onset.  

Many organizations decide that they need to evaluate enterprise software but do not know where to start.  Outside of generic steps, there are hardly any properly documented processes that focus specifically on software evaluation . It's hard for organizations to understand the full scope, importance, procedure, risks and implementation implications of choosing the wrong software for the organization.  A wrong, incomplete, rushed evaluation method and bias introduction within the organization can be detrimental to the outcome for software evaluation success. 

A best practice approach that many organizations have adopted is to outsource the software selection process. The expertise that software evaluation requires is a specific documented procedure that achieves the proper ROI, lowers implementation risk by identifying potential issues early on in the evaluation process, a documented method that has actionable measureable steps with actual outcomes that can be quantified. 

Organizations that specialize in software evaluations that do not sell, implement software or partner with vendors will provide the most effective sources for a proper software evaluation.  Benefits from an unbiased software selection process will enable the organization to focus on its core business during the evaluation, not having to worry about valuable personnel resources doing two jobs and not pay the proper attention to detail that is required, reduce time spent on selection which results in savings and eliminates company biases.  A structured approach to follow will maximize the effort in software evaluation.  A methodology that combines sound evaluation procedures coupled with the technology will assist your organization success in the evaluation process.

Platform provides foundation for growing business - Well maybe

We have been covering Cloud computing and SaaS in our last few blog post lately due to the increased interest we see from our customers.  To that end, check out  our previous posts on cloud computing. 


As cloud computing grows along with services available newer options are now available for IT intensive shops. Organizations with a large IT staff may look to build their software to a customized version of what specifically is needed for that organization.  This may be especially true if they are already using a component of software from Force.com, Zoho, Netsuite, Amazon etc.  These vendors all offer platforms in which have open API's for you to build your own application on.


Before jumping in and building your own ERM to suit your specific needs consider these issues that should be overcome in order to proceed.  If these can figured out then go ahead and let us know how you have overcome these issues. "Build it and they will come" and hopefully follow.

• What if the sme (subject matter expert) builds the application and then leaves, is there a strategy to continue use of the application and how?
• Will software applications developments and ITIL methodologies be implemented and followed, is there any reference to source code or documentation?
• How does a network administrator manage multiple applications that reside in the cloud and in-house?
• How is data manged if enterprise search is an initiative?
• How intricate is the integration between applications?  
• Does this help or destroy the content management initiative or create silos and disparate systems?
• Who handles the support for multiple applications, what type of resources are required? 
• Will you need an sme for each application that you build? 
• How are the upgrades handled for each application and how often, does that include interfaces? 

While we think building on a platform is a good idea that provides flexibility and provides an SOA environment all aspects should be considered when undertaking this strategy.  


A related blog that sheds another perspective on this topic is Vinnie's over at Deal Architect The deal architect  The end of packaged software as we know it ? 

Will private media deals fragment web capabilitiies ?

With all of the posturing going on for additional revenue from search engines between mainly Google and Bing and the fight for SEO supremacy mean the consumer will be out of luck?   I understand the drive for increasing revenue but to segment and withhold content from another search engine may cause a consumer backlash to occur.


As a consumer of web search using multiple engines and the capabilities of individual browsers is a nice option to have.  A few questions that I have that may possibly change search as we know it are:  

• Will this segmentation make it harder to find what you are looking for and where to look ?  
• How about from a social media or marketing strategy standpoint will you specifically have to submit your press ?releases and product updates to individual engines and the like ?
• Will search capabilities be diminished or enhanced, 
• Will consumers need to pick a search provider
• How could this affect your enterprise search strategy with integration or lack there of ?
• How will this affect mobile search engine capabilities ? 
• Will different search engines "spin" their own version of the news ?
• Will mobile providers have to pick a provider to offer search to its client base and will that be at a premium ?
• Will consumers have to have to pay for the use of additional search engines if content is split up? 
• Will Google Docs and Azure continue to have open document standards if the browsers cannot play together ? How will that affect other software that offer open standards for browser capabilities ? 
• Will you have to register with each provider and have another password ? 

My take on the upcoming fragmentation is that it will make it harder to find what you are looking for.  Maybe that could be one possible initiative to keep you on the web longer so that you see all the pretty new advertising.  As can seen, there are more questions than answers at this point but are they missing what the consumer really wants, easily accessible, free, real-time data.  I just hope I can be offered the same convenience now without more hassle.