Orb Web

Early morning walk in late fall gave me an opportunity to see this beautiful orb web. Spiders are amazing creatures in the nature.. it was not until I started reading for my  kids that I started appreciating them and realizing how much human beings have observed them..

For example, this web above could have 8 different types of silks! See this very interesting Ted Talk Presentation by Cheryl Hayashi.

SaaS and Data Management

Salesforce.com projects are popping up in all the enterprises, finally the business is having its revenge on the tech team.. IDC Says 75% of US Organizations use at least 1 cloud/SaaS application.. But if not implemented properly the business is in for a rude awakening..Techies will get a chance to come back with vengeance..
Companies are forgoing all that age old wisdom of proper data management and data quality.. The SaaS applications are build in lightening fast speed, probably using remote teams – no documentation is kept and most of the players implement a quick and dirty kitchen sink approach with everything going to SFDC..

As architects we need to emphasize the importance data management to the project teams. All that ROI is going to run down if we have to implement any data laundry work later..(interestingly #datatrim a SaaS vendor is priming itself for all your data laundry work..!)

Toyoto Prius quality issues

Just as many IT firms and business schools are touting the Toyota Approaches for their Quality initiative we are now hearing series of concerns on their quality. So what is happening to all that lean and 6Sigma principles? Is it too much of trust on process/technology?  I guess the emphasis needs to be on the “continuous improvement” . You cannot just rest and let yourself rust.

Extreme Collaboration

Suja pointed me to the google home page today, showing “an apple falling down” to commemorate Newtons birthday, I was more preoccupied with other great things happening in Google world.

I am very excited about the “Google Wave” as an extreme collaboration platform, with lot of possibilities in the future.. Just take a look at the SAP and Salesforce.com examples in this site.

The whole concept around OpenSocial.org and building google frameworks to build gadgets is going to change the way software is going to be build. Companies like SAP and Saleforce.com are signing up to do the beta environment is a good proof of this change.

Avatar 3D Version

I hope the movie Avatar inspires people to love trees and forests just like james cameron’s other movie titanic, that inspired love (at least in india it did that). 

The luminescent scenes of the forest are a treat to the eyes. 3D viewing of the vivid flora and fauna is highly invigorating. 

Now the big question was the comment in the movie “the sky-people had no plants or trees in their place”. Are we heading to that direction? On my recent trip to Tanjore the “Rice bowl of Tamil Nadu”, I was saddened to see that industrialization and progressiveness are overpowering crop cultivation and production. We are building up residential and industrial areas in good fertile lands. Our youth are too lazy to work in farms, they would rather drive cars around or spend their time in shopping malls, while the elderly spend their time in the fields, tending to the crops.

New Data Services from Cloud

Recently IBM and Microsoft has started data services in cloud. The Microsoft project focus on services that consolidates information from a variety of sources like the Press, Weather Channels and NASA to provide valuable insights. The project is based on their Azure cloud platform. IBM has offered a more interesting Cloud Analytics platform in the familiar Cognos environment on their Z OS.  Both these projects are making it easy for developers to build their solutions in familiar platforms and deploy in Cloud. When customers start connecting these cloud services with their other applications we can see strong use of analytics and decision making leveraging large and desperate data sets.

This is going to result in removing many of the cost entry barriers for SMEs and startups. Look at what a Boston-based IT services provider, used Azure workflow capabilities to automate endpoint provisioning and patching services for teachers in rural Ethiopia.

Cloud Harvesting (2)

Sampath helped me with this picture for “Cloud Harvesting”.

Enterprise Architects will need to start plumbing different systems hosted across mulitiple cloud environments. Hopefully the  standards bodies and vendors will start collaborating to make our lives easy. I also believe the current wave of vendor consolidation will help eliminate multiple players so we are left with a few integration points.