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Enterprise RIA adoption is growing. It helps businesses become more efficient and grow. It helps entire business ecosystems to work better together by applying modern information technology. Isn’t this what Business Technology is about?
I had in recent days further interaction with Extendas, in relation with their Flower Office project (mentioned in my post The Extended Enterprise – from vision to reality with Rich Internet Application technology). I was able to get additional details about the solution and its reach – all the way from the horn of Africa to the heart of Europe.
This is a great illustration of what can be accomplished with modern business technology and how it brings its benefits also to the developing economies.
FlowerOffice Portal implements an Enterprise RIA solution from a joint venture of Extendas (ISV specializing in ecommerce solutions and Dutch market leader in Petrol ERP) and Van Delft International (one of the leading suppliers of cut flowers in the Netherlands and award winning early adopter of mobile software technology).
The FlowerOffice Portal application spans the entire supply chain from flower growers from all over the world to the FloraHolland exchange through the flower trader (such as Van Delft) and finally to wholesalers or even flower shops.
This is an Enterprise Class application, requiring a rich user interaction and transactional capability that is beyond browser based applications. Implemented with uniPaaS, the application is available simply via a URL and login credentials.
The flower supply chain starts with Flower Growers. These supply their flowers to brokers who trade on the flower exchange. Flower wholesalers buy those flowers from the brokers, resell them to retailers and Flowers Shops.
So far, the Flower Exchange was computerized and accessible to ERP systems used by the brokers, and the trade with Growers and Shops was mostly done over the phone.
Flowersoffice has such an ERP system at its core, which is now extended with an Enterprise RIA applications targeted at the edges of the supply chain – the Flower Growers and Flower Shops. These access the application via a portal and can directly enter their data, which is updated in real time. It actually enables a flower shop to get a quote of the current price for a specific flower lot and place an order directly, without further human intervention. This reduces several steps in the process, adding value across the chain, all the way to the end-consumer.
The present beta test focuses on the rose trade, and involves a dozen farmers from Kenya and Ethiopia, FJ Zandbergen (Dutch flower broker) , Delft International (Dutch flower broker and wholeseller) and a few flowers shops. Once released, it is expected to be used by some 1500 flower shops, streamlining the short-lived flower trade, accelerating logistics and reducing overhead.
Your thoughts? I’m also interested to know about similar experiences.
Categories: Computing and IT · Impressions
Tagged: Magic Software, RIA, uniPaaS, Business Technology, Enterprise RIA
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The last couple of weeks were rich with meetings and discussions about SOA, RIA and Cloud, in between the Forrester IT Forum in the US and the SOA Forum in Switzerland. What strikes me is the “lemming behavior” of a lot of software vendors who decorate their offering with Cloud and XaaS feathers, oblivious of the revenue precipice that a
waits them right ahead.
I have touched upon this subject in my article on RIA and Cloud Computing Apps, as well as in a blog post last year (The coming out of the hybrid SaaS model). It’s ripe for an update.
What we have seen in the last couple of years is an increasing offer of Infrastructure As A Service (IaaS) providing quite elastic on-demand pricing, and an increasing number of software vendors using such infrastructure to offer Cloud hosted applications. The evolution of IaaS technologies facilitates the deployment of traditional on-premise applications over the Cloud, and tempts their vendors to slap on those “Cloud Feathers”. What seems to be put aside are the business model implications.
What the pure SaaS vendors (such as Salesforce.com) experience is a growing pressure of SaaS users towards more granular pricing – real pay per use and not only flat subscriptions. And sooner or later we will see this becoming more and more available. The consequence is a further reduction of software usage costs for customers, and by implication lower revenue per user for the vendor. Vendors will try to compensate by looking for cost reductions – both in developing and maintaining the software and in deploying it. So how can software vendors make money and increase shareholder value in such conditions? They would have to look for more productive and cost efficient software platforms, and implement new business models that tap into the entire ecosystem for shared revenue. And they should be prepared for a very tough transition, which might become fatal.
I recently came across a comment by a Magic Software shareholder that “the licensing model is difficult to understand and costly compared to other tools many of which do not even have licensing models. (this makes MGIC less attractive to potential new developers)”. What is perceived by the commentator as a limitation is in fact one of the bright spots which gives this company a much better position in the growing Cloud market. Magic software already creates most of its revenue using a shared revenue model – tapping into its ecosystem for shared revenues with its customers and partners. It gives the company a very robust outlook and resilience to the upcoming shift in the software business model.
I’m looking forward for your opinions.
Categories: Computing and IT · Mindshare · Opinions & Comments
Tagged: Business Technology, Cloud Computing, IaaS, ISV, Magic Software, SaaS
I am commenting every once and a while on SOA and Cloud discussions at ebizQ forums. Recently I noticed a growing sensitivity to semantics – Private vs. Public Cloud, Web vs. Cloud, Web 3.0…
This prompted me to post here a couple of recent comments I made on the Cloud Computing forum
How much “Cloud” are “Private Clouds”?
I do not think that Cloud is about semantics, but rather about practice and reality within a concept. My personal experience shows that Enterprises are indeed implementing “Cloud Architecture” solutions which are substituting fat Client-Server implementations, but mostly using the traditional business model (perpetual ownership and in-house or hosted location) – when it concerns core and customized solutions. Cloud based infrastructure and applications delivered as a service and on-demand are indeed still limited to “commodity solutions” – collaboration, CRM, etc…
I described a couple of cases in The Extended Enterprise – from vision to reality with Rich Internet Application technology, and I find a consensus with many industry analysts that these types of implementations are well part of what they observe as Cloud implementations. I do not care much about how it is named, and if people prefer to reserve “Cloud” for a more restrictive checklisted definition that’s fine with me – but what I describe above is a very tangible reality of an application architecture that leverages internet based technologies – hosting resources, communications and clients.
Is “Web” distinct from “Cloud”?
I must admit that I do not understand very well the distinction between Web and Cloud. For me, Cloud is an integral part of the Web, relating to several aspects of it – in particular architecture and ubiquitous access to hardware and software resources. So they are converged already.
I perceive the Cloud “phenomenon” as firming up the business nature of the Web on the IT side, paving the way for Enterprises to exploit the Web not only for communication related aspects (from email to ecommerce and marketing) but also for the deployment of core applications. I am presently involved in such a project that brings the notion of “play list” to a composite application for financial brokers and portfolio managers in a global financial institution, incorporating most of the “bells and whistles” of Web2.0 user experience and a hybrid Cloud and Legacy backend. That is what I consider as Convergence – but the main converging domains here are Web and traditional Enterprise IT.
In my opinion, semantics are necessary for a meaningful communication, but let’s not overdo it. And how do you see it?
Categories: Computing and IT · Mindshare · Opinions & Comments
Tagged: Cloud, Cloud Computing, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Enterprise RIA, Web3.0, Private Cloud
The topic of Citizen Development recently received a lot of attention – the latest coming from new Gartner report and from ebizQ forums. So I’d like to revisit it.
The temptation of “citizen” application development dates back to the prehistory of the PC – the introduction of micro computers and products such as Framework and dBase. That was the time when we entered the market with Magic Software, and I supported the thesis that 4GL’s enable line of business experts to directly implement business applications shortcutting much of the traditional development and programming process. Reality proved otherwise, showing that such easy to use tools actually amplify lack of IT skills, which sometimes led to very unhappy endings. We revised our approach very fast to target system analysts rather than LOB professionals, and observed amazing results – very small teams providing very rich and comprehensive applications (an example in More about Enterprise RIA in practice).
Nowadays, I believe that citizen development can be effective provided the following combination: easy and intuitive assembly and composition tools with adequately enforced governance, and a professionally developed collection of services (building blocks). A good example of such a mix is Convertigo.com, which evolved from Programmatic Integration to Enterprise Mashup’s and now to SOA backend enablement (targeted at IT professionals via an Eclipse based studio) and Front-End composition (targeted at citizen developers with Convertigo’s own Composer as well as other popular composition tools).
What do you think about Citizen Development?
Categories: Computing and IT · Mindshare · Opinions & Comments
Tagged: 4GL, Agile Development, Application Development, Convertigo, dBase, Magic Software, Mashup, SOA
I used to think that multitenancy was a key incentive for Cloud Computing. The experience of the last couple of years leads me to a different view. The Cloud makes IT more ubiquitous, but multitenancy is far from being ubiquitous – so most of the services offered in the cloud are either not multitenant or use some kind of shared-hardware scheme (virtualization). So far there seems to be more cloud computing capacity than there is a demand for it – so the improved resource usage aspect is not so important. I also see that many enterprises adopt the Cloud advantages for their own software, for example rolling out core enterprise applications as RIA’s to their extended ecosystem partners and thus streamlining the supply chain and reducing costs.
My conclusion is that multitenancy is more of a future feature that would emerge when the economy would mandate it. So my recommendation is to adopt application platforms that enable multitenancy and develop future applications as such, and in the meantime take advantage of the Cloud using pragmatic approaches.
Categories: Computing and IT · Mindshare
Tagged: Cloud, Cloud Computing, Enterprise RIA, Multitenancy, virtualization
In the past year I wrote frequently about the manner in which enterprises approach Rich Internet Applications (RIA’s) and Cloud Architecture. I’m happy to see now tangible evidence of this. During the last couple of weeks I received several case descriptions of productive systems, and I’d like to share a couple of particularly interesting cases. For some reason, the more interesting stories come from the Netherlands – I did not figure out yet what’s behind this, but the first RIA example that I described in “More about Enterprise RIA in practice” also originated in that country.
The “Flower Shop” solution is an Enterprise RIA coming from a joint venture of Extendas (ISV specialising in eCommerce solutions) and Van Delft International (one of the leading suppliers of cut flowers in the Netherlands and award winning early adopter of mobile software technology). This application spans the entire supply chain from the FloraHolland exchange through the flower trader (such as Van Delft) to the flower shop. This is an Enterprise Class application, requiring a rich user interaction and transactional capability that is beyond browser based applications. Implemented with uniPaaS, the application is available simply via a URL and login credentials. It is presently being rolled out and is expected to be used by some 1500 flower shops, streamlining the short-lived flower trade, accelerating logistics and reducing overhead.
Another amazing customer of Magic Software is the VanDrie Group, the World’s largest veal producer. VanDrie already had a browser based application, VealVision, providing the full historical details about your piece of Schnitzel from the farmer to the supermarket. This has been now replaced by a fully interactive RIA, enabling each party in the supply chain to feed the system directly – streamlining the short-lived veal trade, accelerating logistics and reducing overhead…
As Redmonk analyst Michael Coté commented on these stories, Enterprise RIA’s bring the “boring back-office applications” to the Web era and the usability level which the millennial generation expects from IT. They also remind us the Cloud Computing is not only infrastructure on demand, but has a far reaching business impact and that its adopters already gain a lot from it.
Categories: Computing and IT · Mindshare
Tagged: Application Platforms, Cloud, Magic Software, RIA, uniPaaS, ISV, Enterprise RIA, RedMonk, Michael Coté, Extendas, Van Delft, FloraHolland, VanDrie, VealVision
We have seen in my previous post about hydrogen two main factors that can facilitate the supply and competitiveness of Hydrogen – H2 production, and H2 Storage and Transportation.
At present it takes about 1.5 times energy to produce H2 – meaning that we have to invest 1.5kW in order to obtain 1kW worth of H2. I suspect that the energy investment in obtaining 1kW of Coal or other fossil fuel is not less (in particular when you consider the cost of their being non-renwable). I did some research and found an interesting study by Prof Risto Tarjanne – Competitive Comparison of Electricity Production Alternatives – I copy here the relevant graphic.
What this implies is that Nuclear electricity cost is about 2.4€ç/kWh (3.6$ç), and that instead of wasting power during off-peak hours, we can cleanly produce large amounts of hydrogen from water using electrical energy. But given that the boiling point of hydrogen is cryogenic – at about minus 252.87 °C – it is very difficult and expensive to store it as is. One of the main challenges of the hydrogen economy is to find a way to store H2 in a similar density to that of fossil fuel.
Let’s conclude this post by stating that it should be possible to produce hydrogen without CO2 emissions at an energy cost of about 3.6€ç/kWh, or €1.2 per Kg of emission free hydrogen. In the next post, I’ll tackle the storage and transportation issue.
Categories: CleanTech · Mindshare
Tagged: CleanTech, Electricity, H2, Hydrogen, Hydrogen Production, Hydrogen Storage, Renewable Energy
An interesting discussion is developing on ebizQ whether Cloud Computing Too Embryonic to Use for Serious Business Purposes. It shows a consensus that we have to look at the meaning of Cloud Computing in the Enterprise context.
I tend to distinguish between the infrastructure and the software architecture that can support the delivery of enterprise applications in the Cloud (to power users over the web), and the acquisition of such infrastructure and software on a per-use (or other non perpetual) basis.
My personal experience shows that Enterprises are indeed implementing “Cloud Architecture” solutions which are substituting fat Client-Server implementations, but mostly using the traditional business model (perpetual ownership and in-house or hosted location) – when it concerns core and customized solutions. Cloud based infrastructure and applications delivered as a service and on-demand are indeed still limited to “commodity solutions” – collaboration, CRM, etc…
I have described a nice example of these a few months ago (the Segway story and their uniPaaS solution). I’d like to hear more if you have similar or contradictory experiences and observations.
Categories: Computing and IT · Opinions & Comments
Tagged: Cloud, Cloud Architecture, Cloud Computing, Enterprise RIA, Magic Software, SaaS, Segway, uniPaaS
I have been studying recently the hydrogen economy, and I’d like to share the insight I gained.
Taking a different look at energy, we should consider all forms of fuel as energy carriers and all forms of fuel production (whether mining, drilling, via nuclear reaction or solar/wind etc…) as primary energy sources.
Presently, most of our primary energy sources are non renewable, and most of our energy carriers deliver their energy while polluting the environment. What we want for tomorrow is renewable primary energy sources and non-polluting energy carriers, all at a consumer cost similar to the present.
Renewable primary energy sources are usually of a stationary nature – nuclear plants, wind turbines, solar farms or biogas plants. As long as we can directly produce electricity and transport it over wires to stationary consumers (such as households) we’re fine. However, much of the energy we consume is in a mobile setting – automotive and various devices. For these applications, as well as for isolated off-grid location, we need an easily transportable, non-polluting and renewable energy carrier. There is a broad consensus that Hydrogen can be such a carrier, provided we find ways to harness it.
Hydrogen (H2) can be cleanly produced from water with electricity generated by a renewable primary energy source, and when consumed it releases energy while producing clean water. In terms of energy content it is also very attractive: 1Kg of H2 contains the equivalent of 33kWh – compared to about 11kWh contained in the equivalent amount of Diesel fuel – and compared to 0.3kWh in 1Kg of a top battery.
I’ll expand on the practical aspects of hydrogen production, storage and transportation in a subsequent post.
In the meantime, I’m keen to learn about your view on the futur of energy.
Categories: CleanTech · Mindshare
Tagged: Clean Energy, CleanTech, Electrical cars, Energy, Hydrogen, Nuclear Power, Renewable Energy
How to survive the dark side of Cloud Computing
June 10, 2010 · 3 Comments
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The last couple of weeks were rich with meetings and discussions about SOA, RIA and Cloud, in between the Forrester IT Forum in the US and the SOA Forum in Switzerland. What strikes me is the “lemming behavior” of a lot of software vendors who decorate their offering with Cloud and XaaS feathers, oblivious of the revenue precipice that a
waits them right ahead.
I have touched upon this subject in my article on RIA and Cloud Computing Apps, as well as in a blog post last year (The coming out of the hybrid SaaS model). It’s ripe for an update.
What we have seen in the last couple of years is an increasing offer of Infrastructure As A Service (IaaS) providing quite elastic on-demand pricing, and an increasing number of software vendors using such infrastructure to offer Cloud hosted applications. The evolution of IaaS technologies facilitates the deployment of traditional on-premise applications over the Cloud, and tempts their vendors to slap on those “Cloud Feathers”. What seems to be put aside are the business model implications.
What the pure SaaS vendors (such as Salesforce.com) experience is a growing pressure of SaaS users towards more granular pricing – real pay per use and not only flat subscriptions. And sooner or later we will see this becoming more and more available. The consequence is a further reduction of software usage costs for customers, and by implication lower revenue per user for the vendor. Vendors will try to compensate by looking for cost reductions – both in developing and maintaining the software and in deploying it. So how can software vendors make money and increase shareholder value in such conditions? They would have to look for more productive and cost efficient software platforms, and implement new business models that tap into the entire ecosystem for shared revenue. And they should be prepared for a very tough transition, which might become fatal.
I recently came across a comment by a Magic Software shareholder that “the licensing model is difficult to understand and costly compared to other tools many of which do not even have licensing models. (this makes MGIC less attractive to potential new developers)”. What is perceived by the commentator as a limitation is in fact one of the bright spots which gives this company a much better position in the growing Cloud market. Magic software already creates most of its revenue using a shared revenue model – tapping into its ecosystem for shared revenues with its customers and partners. It gives the company a very robust outlook and resilience to the upcoming shift in the software business model.
I’m looking forward for your opinions.
→ 3 CommentsCategories: Computing and IT · Mindshare · Opinions & Comments
Tagged: Business Technology, Cloud Computing, IaaS, ISV, Magic Software, SaaS