Dreamforce 2011 Focuses on Post-PC Revolution
Salesforce.com is getting ready for Dreamforce 2011, its hallmark cloud -computing event. This year's conference is planned for Aug. 30 through Sept. 2 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, and will focus on something that's been in the news plenty in recent days: The post-PC revolution.
As Salesforce sees it, the post-PC revolution will further accelerate the social enterprise . There is clearly a rise in companies working to improve the way they collaborate, communicate and share information with customers and employees in the cloud. That rise, Salesforce said, is transforming companies into social enterprises, which it defined as those that build social profiles of customers, create internal social networks, and listen to and engage with customers over the Internet.
Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, offered a bold statement with which his competitors likely disagree. "Each year at Dreamforce, we set the agenda for the cloud-computing industry, and this year will be no exception," he said. "At Dreamforce 2011, we will showcase customers that have embraced innovation and transformed themselves into social enterprises."
Cloud Battles
The gestalt the technology market is wandering through is moving to an ever more web-centric world, a world that surrounds companies like Salesforce -- and favors them, according to Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.
"Salesforce is not really known as a social-networking company by any stretch of the imagination," Enderle said. "Both Salesforce and IBM are having a little trouble grappling with it as a result. On the other hand, it's not like the social networks are flooding into the businesses overtly, it's more covertly and carried by the employees."
As Enderle sees it, Salesforce's take on the market is correct. But He questioned whether the company can position itself to leverage the evolution. While Salesforce was initially one of the biggest enterprise cloud players, he noted, cloud leadership has shifted to the likes of EMC and IBM.
Tapping Relevant Trends
"To a large extent I think Salesforce needs to return to being more relevant in the trends that they themselves helped create," Enderle said. "Salesforce is doing a marginal job riding these trends. The right thing to do is to get back and start talking about yourself as a leader. But the danger is that they aren't anymore, and they need to address that."
Salesforce will work to trumpet its cloud leadership at Dreamforce with sessions on government, healthcare and the social world. Special guests at the annual user and developer conference include Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google. The event aims to teach attendees how their companies can take advantage of Salesforce's cloud offerings. The company expects more than 25,000 people to attend the 450 sessions.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Airlines Lure Premium Customers
Delta Air Lines' master sommelier Andrea Robinson opened up bottle after bottle of white and red wine from France, Italy, Australia, the U.S. and other parts of the world.
As she tasted them Monday, a blue bucket sat on the table next to her. It was there so she could spit out each sip, ensuring she didn't get tipsy and could distinguish between the different wines. By the time she's done in the next few days, Robinson will have tasted and smelled roughly 2,000 bottles.
The delicate work of a sommelier has become more important as U.S. airlines fight for premium passengers willing to shell out up to thousands of dollars to fly business class on international and transcontinental flights. The idea isn't to make money on the wine -- the passengers in those seats drink for free -- but rather to keep those customers coming back and encourage their well-heeled friends and co-workers to join them. Other airlines including United Airlines and American Airlines also work with wine experts to help them choose what to serve on their flights.
And there's a market for it: According to the International Air Transport Association, through the first four months of this year, there was an 8.5 percent increase year-over-year in premium passenger traffic, which includes business class and first class seats. Those seats are among the most pricey and profitable for airlines. The trade group expects fuel costs to weigh on premium traffic, and stronger growth in the second half of the year will depend on how well the economy holds up.
Robinson's task is to choose 30 labels for Delta, which is based in Atlanta. The wine and champagne will be served in Delta's BusinessElite class cabins in 2012. The world's second-largest carrier expects to order some 1.6 million bottles for the service. The still wines Robinson looks for range from a retail price of $25 to $30 a bottle, while dessert wines will run $30 to $35 a bottle and the champagne will run $45 to $50 a bottle.
"If it costs $20, it has to taste like $40. That's what I'm aiming for," Robinson said.
She is looking for wines with a distinct taste that will come through when sipped at 30,000 feet (9,000 meters) by bankers and vacationers alike, because passengers' sense of taste and smell can be diminished when in flight.
Delta's domestic coach passengers can buy glasses of wine, though the selections won't be as chic and won't get the same special attention from Robinson. Coach passengers on Delta international flights get wine for free.
Sommeliers are also working with other airlines.
Doug Frost, a Kansas City author who writes and lectures about wine and also is a master sommelier, is the wine and spirits consultant for United Airlines. He helps select tens of thousands of cases of wines and spirits each year for the carrier. Ken Chase, a Canadian classically trained wine merchant with an international reputation, does wine selections for American Airlines. According to the airline, Chase selects fine wines for various routes paying close attention to menu parings, as well as the ethnic, cultural, seasonal and stylistic differences of each destination.
Delta also is mindful of the destinations it serves when it selects wines. Some of the offerings on Robinson's taste menu came from Chile and Argentina. Delta has a big presence in Latin America.
The selection of wine, though, isn't the only thing that's important. So, too, is the flight attendants' knowledge of the offerings so they can answer business class passengers' questions. Delta is offering wine training for flight attendants.
Julie Pearson, who has been a Delta flight attendant for 23 years, attended Monday's wine tasting. The 44-year-old works in the BusinessElite cabin on the airline's Boston to Amsterdam route. Some passengers will know exactly what they want, while others have questions and enjoy the ability to taste the different wines on board before making a selection.
"A good sign for the flight is when all my wine glasses are dirty -- and that happens a lot," Pearson said.
Delta Air Lines' master sommelier Andrea Robinson opened up bottle after bottle of white and red wine from France, Italy, Australia, the U.S. and other parts of the world.
As she tasted them Monday, a blue bucket sat on the table next to her. It was there so she could spit out each sip, ensuring she didn't get tipsy and could distinguish between the different wines. By the time she's done in the next few days, Robinson will have tasted and smelled roughly 2,000 bottles.
The delicate work of a sommelier has become more important as U.S. airlines fight for premium passengers willing to shell out up to thousands of dollars to fly business class on international and transcontinental flights. The idea isn't to make money on the wine -- the passengers in those seats drink for free -- but rather to keep those customers coming back and encourage their well-heeled friends and co-workers to join them. Other airlines including United Airlines and American Airlines also work with wine experts to help them choose what to serve on their flights.
And there's a market for it: According to the International Air Transport Association, through the first four months of this year, there was an 8.5 percent increase year-over-year in premium passenger traffic, which includes business class and first class seats. Those seats are among the most pricey and profitable for airlines. The trade group expects fuel costs to weigh on premium traffic, and stronger growth in the second half of the year will depend on how well the economy holds up.
Robinson's task is to choose 30 labels for Delta, which is based in Atlanta. The wine and champagne will be served in Delta's BusinessElite class cabins in 2012. The world's second-largest carrier expects to order some 1.6 million bottles for the service. The still wines Robinson looks for range from a retail price of $25 to $30 a bottle, while dessert wines will run $30 to $35 a bottle and the champagne will run $45 to $50 a bottle.
"If it costs $20, it has to taste like $40. That's what I'm aiming for," Robinson said.
She is looking for wines with a distinct taste that will come through when sipped at 30,000 feet (9,000 meters) by bankers and vacationers alike, because passengers' sense of taste and smell can be diminished when in flight.
Delta's domestic coach passengers can buy glasses of wine, though the selections won't be as chic and won't get the same special attention from Robinson. Coach passengers on Delta international flights get wine for free.
Sommeliers are also working with other airlines.
Doug Frost, a Kansas City author who writes and lectures about wine and also is a master sommelier, is the wine and spirits consultant for United Airlines. He helps select tens of thousands of cases of wines and spirits each year for the carrier. Ken Chase, a Canadian classically trained wine merchant with an international reputation, does wine selections for American Airlines. According to the airline, Chase selects fine wines for various routes paying close attention to menu parings, as well as the ethnic, cultural, seasonal and stylistic differences of each destination.
Delta also is mindful of the destinations it serves when it selects wines. Some of the offerings on Robinson's taste menu came from Chile and Argentina. Delta has a big presence in Latin America.
The selection of wine, though, isn't the only thing that's important. So, too, is the flight attendants' knowledge of the offerings so they can answer business class passengers' questions. Delta is offering wine training for flight attendants.
Julie Pearson, who has been a Delta flight attendant for 23 years, attended Monday's wine tasting. The 44-year-old works in the BusinessElite cabin on the airline's Boston to Amsterdam route. Some passengers will know exactly what they want, while others have questions and enjoy the ability to taste the different wines on board before making a selection.
"A good sign for the flight is when all my wine glasses are dirty -- and that happens a lot," Pearson said.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Business intelligence
As economic recovery boosts IT hiring, specialized skill sets will see the most action. These include business analytics, storage and cloud computing. Tim said data needs to be analyzed to be useful, and Jordan said data storage is always a good place to be. And CIOs who can deliver continue to be in demand
IT careers are heating up again -- at least in some sectors. So what are the best IT careers for 2011? Is it the mobile market? Enterprise security? Business analytics? The good news is, experts say there is plenty of action across the board for technologists with specialized skill sets.
Is betting on business analytics. Tim, a spokesperson for Big Blue's business-analytics division, said businesses and governments alike are grappling with the challenge of making sense of this data deluge to turn it into new opportunities, increased performance, and faster, better decision-making. Gartner reports business analytics is a top 10 priority for companies in 2011.
"The power of business analytics is transforming this information into a strategic asset. Although having the best, most complete and up-to-date information is useless if you can't make sense of it," Powers said. "Data unanalyzed is data wasted. Therefore, businesses and governments need two very important things to make this happen: The right technology, and employees with the right expertise and skill sets."
Storage, Virtualization and the Cloud
Jordan, president and CEO of Insider Search, focuses on another area of IT: Senior level sales, marketing, engineering, consulting and management talent -- with a specific focus on data storage and infrastructure . He sees plenty of activity on those sectors in 2011.
"Storage has always been a great place to be, because no matter how bad the economy gets, storage is always a sizable chunk of any IT budget. Every organization needs to store and manage their critical data. Storage administrators, architects and consultants will always be in high demand," said.
"Two other key areas of massive potential growth are virtualization and cloud -computing-related technologies. It's often said that 'virtualization is the gateway drug to the cloud,'" he added. "In the future, more and more companies will move toward virtualized environments and utilize cloud architectures. It's a good idea to get on board now as the train builds momentum."
A Fresh Look at CIOs
Steve, a managing director at global search firm Chase, said the CIO position continues to grow in breadth of demands, complexity and responsibility to a wide range of senior executives. Because of this, he said, great CIO talent is still in demand, along with several first-level managers.
"IT jobs are especially in demand for people who can deliver to the complexity of the business -- more for less, effectiveness and efficiencies, compliances, risk management, proactive business alignment, and service-level expectations," said. "Skills in strategic planning, business analysis and process improvement, project management, infrastructure services, security and risk management are in demand."
Jack, vice president and chief delivery officer for Avandex, said communication , collaboration and data access within the enterprise will drive greater reliance on positions such as computer-systems analysts and IT specialists who ensure the implementation and efficiency of the technologies that help to run our businesses every day. He concluded, "The best IT careers will be those that allow for the chance to engage with people on a global level -- learning cultures throughout the world through collaboration with teammates located at various offices."
As economic recovery boosts IT hiring, specialized skill sets will see the most action. These include business analytics, storage and cloud computing. Tim said data needs to be analyzed to be useful, and Jordan said data storage is always a good place to be. And CIOs who can deliver continue to be in demand
IT careers are heating up again -- at least in some sectors. So what are the best IT careers for 2011? Is it the mobile market? Enterprise security? Business analytics? The good news is, experts say there is plenty of action across the board for technologists with specialized skill sets.
Is betting on business analytics. Tim, a spokesperson for Big Blue's business-analytics division, said businesses and governments alike are grappling with the challenge of making sense of this data deluge to turn it into new opportunities, increased performance, and faster, better decision-making. Gartner reports business analytics is a top 10 priority for companies in 2011.
"The power of business analytics is transforming this information into a strategic asset. Although having the best, most complete and up-to-date information is useless if you can't make sense of it," Powers said. "Data unanalyzed is data wasted. Therefore, businesses and governments need two very important things to make this happen: The right technology, and employees with the right expertise and skill sets."
Storage, Virtualization and the Cloud
Jordan, president and CEO of Insider Search, focuses on another area of IT: Senior level sales, marketing, engineering, consulting and management talent -- with a specific focus on data storage and infrastructure . He sees plenty of activity on those sectors in 2011.
"Storage has always been a great place to be, because no matter how bad the economy gets, storage is always a sizable chunk of any IT budget. Every organization needs to store and manage their critical data. Storage administrators, architects and consultants will always be in high demand," said.
"Two other key areas of massive potential growth are virtualization and cloud -computing-related technologies. It's often said that 'virtualization is the gateway drug to the cloud,'" he added. "In the future, more and more companies will move toward virtualized environments and utilize cloud architectures. It's a good idea to get on board now as the train builds momentum."
A Fresh Look at CIOs
Steve, a managing director at global search firm Chase, said the CIO position continues to grow in breadth of demands, complexity and responsibility to a wide range of senior executives. Because of this, he said, great CIO talent is still in demand, along with several first-level managers.
"IT jobs are especially in demand for people who can deliver to the complexity of the business -- more for less, effectiveness and efficiencies, compliances, risk management, proactive business alignment, and service-level expectations," said. "Skills in strategic planning, business analysis and process improvement, project management, infrastructure services, security and risk management are in demand."
Jack, vice president and chief delivery officer for Avandex, said communication , collaboration and data access within the enterprise will drive greater reliance on positions such as computer-systems analysts and IT specialists who ensure the implementation and efficiency of the technologies that help to run our businesses every day. He concluded, "The best IT careers will be those that allow for the chance to engage with people on a global level -- learning cultures throughout the world through collaboration with teammates located at various offices."
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Computers of Tomorrow
Today's computers operate using transistors, wires and electricity. Future computers might use atoms, fibers and light. Personally, I don't give a byte what makes it tick, as long as it does the job. If I could accidentally spill my coffee and not have it cost $848, that would be a cool feature.
But let us assume that you are not still bitter from a recent laptop replacement. You might stop to consider what the world might be like, if computers the size of molecules become a reality. These are the types of computers that could be everywhere, but never seen. Nano sized bio-computers that could target specific areas inside your body. Giant networks of computers, in your clothing, your house, your car. Entrenched in almost every aspect of our lives and yet you may never give them a single thought.
Understanding the theories behind these future computer technologies is not for the meek. My research into quantum computers was made all the more difficult after I learned that in light of her constant interference, it is theoretically possible my mother-in-law could be in two places at once.
If you have the heart, take a gander at the most promising new computer technologies. If not, dare to imagine the ways that billions of tiny, powerful computers will change our society.
Today's computers operate using transistors, wires and electricity. Future computers might use atoms, fibers and light. Personally, I don't give a byte what makes it tick, as long as it does the job. If I could accidentally spill my coffee and not have it cost $848, that would be a cool feature.
But let us assume that you are not still bitter from a recent laptop replacement. You might stop to consider what the world might be like, if computers the size of molecules become a reality. These are the types of computers that could be everywhere, but never seen. Nano sized bio-computers that could target specific areas inside your body. Giant networks of computers, in your clothing, your house, your car. Entrenched in almost every aspect of our lives and yet you may never give them a single thought.
Understanding the theories behind these future computer technologies is not for the meek. My research into quantum computers was made all the more difficult after I learned that in light of her constant interference, it is theoretically possible my mother-in-law could be in two places at once.
If you have the heart, take a gander at the most promising new computer technologies. If not, dare to imagine the ways that billions of tiny, powerful computers will change our society.
What are Optical Computers?
The computers we use today use transistors and semiconductors to control electricity. Computers of the future may utilize crystals and metamaterials to control light. Optical computers make use of light particles called photons.
NASA scientists are working to solve the need for computer speed using light
Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. That's 982,080,000 feet per second -- or 11,784,960,000 inches. In a billionth of a second, one nanosecond, photons of light travel just a bit less than a foot, not considering resistance in air or of an optical fiber strand or thin film. Just right for doing things very quickly in microminiaturized computer chips.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Google Announces Definite End of Their SOAP Search API
Google in a blog post discussing their new Google Code Labs overview page mentions that they’ll end the Google SOAP Search API for good on August 31st this year. So far, while it was announced as unsupported and didn’t accept new sign-ups since December 2006 already, it was still working for those who used it in their past projects. “Since then” Google says their SOAP API has “been steadily declining in usage”. In an email sent out to developers who had once signed up for an API key, Google apologized.
I’m making extensive use of the SOAP Search API over at FindForward.com, an older playground for search experiments. Perhaps one of the simplest routes to go once the SOAP API is dead is to create a module which emulates that API using Google’s REST API. Writing a screenscraping wrapper class might also be just as feasible, and it would even survive if Google decides to kill of the REST API one day; such a wrapper may also support those features which the SOAP API had but the REST API doesn’t (querying for the Google cache of a page, and spellchecking, the least).
Google UK didn’t update their SOAP API homepage yet, still showing the old version. Google originally launched the SOAP API in 2002 (according to Ionut).
When you do use the REST API, Google points out this bit: “each search performed with the API must be the direct result of a user action. Automated searching is strictly prohibited, as is permanently storing any search results.”
Companies may do well to not support dead-end projects forever. The bigger problem with Google’s ending of projects is that they rarely give you an honest answer as to why they ended something, as only that could help you on which present and future products and APIs you should bet. The answer for canceling SOAP support may be that, as the casual-API world is moving towards REST + JSON*, there’s too much overhead involved in the protocol. Here’s a bit of background from ex-Google employee Nelson Minar from November 2006:
As someone who bears some past responsibility for well used SOAP services (Google’s APIs for search and AdWords) let me say now I’d never choose to use SOAP and WSDL again. I was wrong.
The promise of SOAP and WSDL was removing all the plumbing. When you look at SOAP client examples, they’re two lines of code. “Generate proxy. RPC to proxy.” And for toys, that actually works. But for serious things it doesn’t. I don’t have the space to explain all the problems right now (if you’ve seen my talks at O’Reilly conferences, you know), but they boil down to massive interoperability problems. Good lord, you can’t even pass a number between languages reliably, much less arrays, or dates, or structures that can be null, or... It just doesn’t work. Maybe with enough effort SOAP interop could eventually be made to work. It’s not such a problem if you’re writing both the client and the server. But if you’re publishing a server for others to use? Forget it.
The deeper problem with SOAP is strong typing. WSDL accomplishes its magic via XML Schema and strongly typed messages. But strong typing is a bad choice for loosely coupled distributed systems. The moment you need to change anything, the type signature changes and all the clients that were built to your earlier protocol spec break. And I don’t just mean major semantic changes break things, but cosmetic things like accepting a 64 bit int where you use used to only accept 32 bit ints, or making a parameter optional. SOAP, in practice, is incredibly brittle. If you’re building a web service for the world to use, you need to make it flexible and loose and a bit sloppy. Strong typing is the wrong choice.
The REST / HTTP+POX services typically assume that the clients will be flexible and can make sense of messages, even if they change a bit. And in practice this seems to work pretty well. My favourite API to use is the Flickr API, and my favourite client for it is 48 lines of code. It supports 100+ Flickr API methods. How? Fast and loose. And it works great.
Google in a blog post discussing their new Google Code Labs overview page mentions that they’ll end the Google SOAP Search API for good on August 31st this year. So far, while it was announced as unsupported and didn’t accept new sign-ups since December 2006 already, it was still working for those who used it in their past projects. “Since then” Google says their SOAP API has “been steadily declining in usage”. In an email sent out to developers who had once signed up for an API key, Google apologized.
I’m making extensive use of the SOAP Search API over at FindForward.com, an older playground for search experiments. Perhaps one of the simplest routes to go once the SOAP API is dead is to create a module which emulates that API using Google’s REST API. Writing a screenscraping wrapper class might also be just as feasible, and it would even survive if Google decides to kill of the REST API one day; such a wrapper may also support those features which the SOAP API had but the REST API doesn’t (querying for the Google cache of a page, and spellchecking, the least).
Google UK didn’t update their SOAP API homepage yet, still showing the old version. Google originally launched the SOAP API in 2002 (according to Ionut).
When you do use the REST API, Google points out this bit: “each search performed with the API must be the direct result of a user action. Automated searching is strictly prohibited, as is permanently storing any search results.”
Companies may do well to not support dead-end projects forever. The bigger problem with Google’s ending of projects is that they rarely give you an honest answer as to why they ended something, as only that could help you on which present and future products and APIs you should bet. The answer for canceling SOAP support may be that, as the casual-API world is moving towards REST + JSON*, there’s too much overhead involved in the protocol. Here’s a bit of background from ex-Google employee Nelson Minar from November 2006:
As someone who bears some past responsibility for well used SOAP services (Google’s APIs for search and AdWords) let me say now I’d never choose to use SOAP and WSDL again. I was wrong.
The promise of SOAP and WSDL was removing all the plumbing. When you look at SOAP client examples, they’re two lines of code. “Generate proxy. RPC to proxy.” And for toys, that actually works. But for serious things it doesn’t. I don’t have the space to explain all the problems right now (if you’ve seen my talks at O’Reilly conferences, you know), but they boil down to massive interoperability problems. Good lord, you can’t even pass a number between languages reliably, much less arrays, or dates, or structures that can be null, or... It just doesn’t work. Maybe with enough effort SOAP interop could eventually be made to work. It’s not such a problem if you’re writing both the client and the server. But if you’re publishing a server for others to use? Forget it.
The deeper problem with SOAP is strong typing. WSDL accomplishes its magic via XML Schema and strongly typed messages. But strong typing is a bad choice for loosely coupled distributed systems. The moment you need to change anything, the type signature changes and all the clients that were built to your earlier protocol spec break. And I don’t just mean major semantic changes break things, but cosmetic things like accepting a 64 bit int where you use used to only accept 32 bit ints, or making a parameter optional. SOAP, in practice, is incredibly brittle. If you’re building a web service for the world to use, you need to make it flexible and loose and a bit sloppy. Strong typing is the wrong choice.
The REST / HTTP+POX services typically assume that the clients will be flexible and can make sense of messages, even if they change a bit. And in practice this seems to work pretty well. My favourite API to use is the Flickr API, and my favourite client for it is 48 lines of code. It supports 100+ Flickr API methods. How? Fast and loose. And it works great.
Business Intelligence software to reach 65.4 m revenue in 2011.
The market for business intelligence (BI) software in India is forecast to reach revenue of 65.4 m this year, up 15.7 per cent over 2010, according to consultancy firm.
Worldwide, business intelligencesoftware market revenue is forecast to grow 9.7 percent to reach 10.8 billion in 2011. business intelligencewas ranked number five on the list of the top 10 technology priorities in 2011, according to annual global CIO survey.
It is a sign of the strategic importance of business intelligencethat investment remains strong, research director.
He said this market segment had remained strong because the dominant vendors continued to put Business Intelligence, analytics and performance management at the centre of their messaging, while end-user organisations largely continued their business intelligence projects hoping that resulting transparency and insight would enable them to cut costs and improve productivity and agility down the line.
He said the market for business intelligence platforms will remain one of the fastest growing software markets despite sluggish economic growth in most regions.
It said decision making in India historically has been based on either gut feelings or on the business experience of managers.
Business intelligence will allow enterprises to make more fact-based decisions.
Business intelligence promotes revenue growth and faster innovation through shorter product and service life cycles and the ability to find where value is being created in the business, it claimed.
The market for business intelligence (BI) software in India is forecast to reach revenue of 65.4 m this year, up 15.7 per cent over 2010, according to consultancy firm.
Worldwide, business intelligencesoftware market revenue is forecast to grow 9.7 percent to reach 10.8 billion in 2011. business intelligencewas ranked number five on the list of the top 10 technology priorities in 2011, according to annual global CIO survey.
It is a sign of the strategic importance of business intelligencethat investment remains strong, research director.
He said this market segment had remained strong because the dominant vendors continued to put Business Intelligence, analytics and performance management at the centre of their messaging, while end-user organisations largely continued their business intelligence projects hoping that resulting transparency and insight would enable them to cut costs and improve productivity and agility down the line.
He said the market for business intelligence platforms will remain one of the fastest growing software markets despite sluggish economic growth in most regions.
It said decision making in India historically has been based on either gut feelings or on the business experience of managers.
Business intelligence will allow enterprises to make more fact-based decisions.
Business intelligence promotes revenue growth and faster innovation through shorter product and service life cycles and the ability to find where value is being created in the business, it claimed.
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