Connotate and Its Landing Page
December 15, 2009
Getting leads and making sales is the name of the game for enterprise search vendors. I think I found an example of a search vendor using Twitter and a landing page to get leads. Here’s the tweet that I saw from a person posting as dnapoleo.
This bit.ly link pointed to this special landing page:
I found this interesting. I wonder, however, if this type of marketing will deliver qualified leads. Making sales today requires a heck of a lot of work. The cost and complexity of enterprise search and content processing systems seems ill suited for Twitter. A quick look at my Overflight service reveals that a balanced marketing plan is the approach taken by Autonomy, Coveo, Exalead, and MarkLogic, for example.
In fact, making sales requires a motivated sales force, brand positioning, resellers, Web logs, media campaigns using every trick in the sales books at Barnes & Noble, and client champions. It is December and cold out there. Sales heat is needed.
Contrast the Connotate approach to Google’s use of a paper wrap around to the free commuter newspaper, Metro. Google was pitching its Chrome “consumer” Web browser.
Connotate’s effort warrants watching. Now that AOL has repositioned Relegence.com as Love.com, I think some market headroom may become available for Connotate.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 15, 2009
Oyez, oyez, I am disclosing that no one paid me to write about Connotate’s possible tweet campaign. Who’s on first? Oh, I know. I am reporting today to the Farm Credit Administration. Grow those revenues, people!
Oracle Feels Heat, Tries to Redefine Kitchen
December 3, 2009
I know when there is trouble on the off ramp that once ran directly to Sea World south of San Francisco. There is the deterioration of the road bed, a reminder of the problems aging infrastructure pose to drivers. In a way, cracked pavement and poorly marked off ramps are indicative of some enterprise technology solutions as well. You make a choice, expecting a smooth ride to Sea World, and what do you get? A jarring ride down a highway filled with bumps and pot holes. Why no improvements? Good question. I asked this when I was doing one of my periodic brush ups for the companies I track in the search, information management, and content processing sector that is my particular interest.
My research suggests that the giant database vendor Oracle faces a number of challenges. The company’s headquarters can be reached on the old Sea World highway, now named Oracle Way, I think.
First, the company cannot land its corporate jet or its founder’s jet fighter at the same airport as Google. Googlers can walk to their expensive toys. Oracle executives have to fight traffic on 101. Second, there are growing problems from data management upstarts like InfoBright and Aster Data. Third, there are the pesky French search based application vendors like Exalead. Fourth, the geriatric Codd database is getting left in the performance dust by the speedy Perfect Search vortex technology. Fifth, the Oracle Secure Enterprise Search remains an undercard opponent in the enterprise search wrestling matches that entertain me on a daily basis.
But Oracle asserts that it has not only addressed some of its weaknesses but the company has taken a leadership position in next generation data management.
For example, in November 2009, I read an interesting Oracle blog post called “Next Generation Data Warehouse Platforms”. The post made a number of assertions that suggested Oracle had overcome the problems of scaling, performance, and affordability that continue to plague the world’s largest database vendor. For example, that blog post pointed out these breakthroughs for Oracle 11 and I quote from the Oracle blog:
- “Performance => Sun Oracle Database Machine. Yes, it really is fast!
- In-memory processing => Oracle now has (11gR2) In-Memory Parallel Execution. More about this can be read in Maria’s excellent post here.
- In-Database Analytics => As the report says in Exadata V2 and Oracle 11gR2 we are now offloading data mining model scoring to the storage side of the house, which allows us to embed mining models into more and more operational systems and get online (direct) feedback on transactions. We also have for years moved more and more OLAP and Stats functionality into the engine
- Real-time data warehousing => First and foremost the read consistency model introduced in Oracle 4 (this is not a typo…) allowing readers to see consistent data during writes, secondly, the just completed acquisition of Golden Gate and the ETL capabilities (like streams) in Oracle allow for very nice real time data feeds. Oracle’s MAA architecture allows us to be up and running 24*7 on commodity hardware and deliver an online experience to all customers…
- Cloud computing => see the in-database MapReduce post here.
- Appliances => Sun Oracle Database Machine.”
If these statements are spot on, Oracle has cracked some technical and business challenges it has faced for many years. From Oracle’s position of strength, Oracle can crush its rivals by winning head to head competitions. Strength is manifested in client wins and revenues in my book. White papers nuking another tech vendor are not demonstrations of strength in my opinion.
Apparently companies in a position of strength find it appropriate to use rhetoric and disinformation to discipline an upstart. Let me give you an example.
I stumbled upon an Oracle white paper “Mark Logic XML Server 4.1”. You must download your own copy from this link. This paper which shows a November 2009 date here is a fascinating window into Oracle. If I were teaching rhetoric, I would use this Oracle white paper as an example of disinformation. Your mileage may vary.
I asked myself, “Why would a multi-billion dollar outfit invest the time, money, and effort in a direct attack on a specialist company chugging quietly along, pretty much minding its own business?” The Oracle white paper purports to discuss technology of a company that “continues to rely on venture funding”. The white paper explores five alleged weaknesses of the Mark Logic XML Server 4.1. The implications of the Oracle analysis range from cost to complexity to proprietary technology to financial weakness. Mark Logic, according to the white paper “Mark Logic XML Server 4.1” essentially cannot walk and chew gum at the same time.
My own experience with the Mark Logic technology is that Mark Logic can walk, chew gum, and compete in data gymnastics. Keep in mind that I have been fed cold tacos and compensated with a Mark Logic goodie bag at a recent Mark Logic meet up in Washington, DC.
I sat in the crowded meeting room with 225 other people and listened to my former colleagues at Booz, Allen & Hamilton explain their use of the Mark Logic technology. I trust blue chip consultants because the risk of screw ups is too great to deploy a solution that makes a very large client unhappy. I heard speakers representing the US government explain their use of the Mark Logic technology in war fighting, pointing out the benefits of Mark Logic technology in war fighting. I heard whiz kids explain that slicing and dicing information permitted clever mash ups of data without humans fiddling to deliver on the fly, low latency solutions for decision makers. The assertions and evidence in the Oracle anti-Mark Logic white paper were not in line with what I learned directly from Mark Logic users.
This begs the question, “So what’s with the direct attack on Mark Logic?” In my opinion, there are three factors operating:
First, Oracle finds itself in a position of playing catch up in next generation data management. For whatever reason, the Oracle sales engineers have found that organizations in a number of business sectors want a non Oracle solution.
Second, customers are struggling with a mushy economy. The notion of paying more money for Oracle licenses, more money for Oracle service, and more money for more hardware to get acceptable performance continues to lose appeal. Like SAP, Oracle finds itself facing customer resistance to the traditional enterprise software approach. Cost alone is not the only deal breaker. The perceived benefits of an Oracle RDBMS are losing magnetism.
Third, the petascale flows of data in some organizations are forcing a fundamental rethink of traditional data management and repurposing approaches in use since the late 1970s. Last generation technology is not appropriate for next generation data management problems. Not even the entrenched Oracle database administrator can get an aging RDBMS elephant to do the tricks it could in the good old days. A different data animal is needed in my opinion.
I suggest that you read the Oracle write ups yourself and draw your own conclusions. The analysis of Mark Logic underscores Oracle’s own technical Werner’s syndrome.
Stephen Arnold, December 4, 2009
Oyez, oyez, I wish to disclose to the Veterans’ Employment and Training Service that I have been fed tacos and given a goodie bag by Mark Logic’s official chief technology officer. He was nervous around the addled goose, and he watched where he stepped after I waddled away. Prudence is a positive.
Blends: The Starbuckization of Microsoft Business Intelligence
November 28, 2009
I avoid Starbuck’s. I speak English, not Starbuckian. When I say “small”, I want the smallest container, not a restatement by an unemployable 20 something in ersatz Klingon. Microsoft is following in Starbuck’s marketing footsteps, or that’s what I concluded after reading “Microsoft Focuses BI Strategy on SQL Server, SharePoint, Excel”. the idea is
The ProClarity technology Microsoft acquired in 2006 as a BI interface for SQL Server, SharePoint and Office has been dropped in favor of the interfaces users know: Excel and SharePoint. The scorecard and dashboard capabilities in PerformancePoint Server will be embedded in the next version of SharePoint. PerformancePoint Server’s financial planning and budgeting capabilities, however, have been cut from the BI product line.
And further down in the article, this passage appears:
With PowerPivot for Excel, users will be able to conduct complex queries by downloading up to 100 million rows of data to their desktop from many data sources, such as IBM, Oracle, Teradata and SQL Server databases, or data feeds from the Web. The information can then be sliced and diced into reports or users can create BI applications on their desktops and share the applications with colleagues by publishing them on SharePoint.
And finally, this comment:
But midmarket companies can get started now with some BI capabilities and no investments, Helm [Microsoft expert / consultant] said. SharePoint 2007 has scorecard and dashboard functionality. Excel has had data analysis services in place since early 2000, and users do have some capabilities to push Excel data out to SharePoint today.
Am I alone in wondering how these names, variants, and combinations are going to improve business intelligence. The language points to three things in my opinion:
- Microsoft is trying to put a little bit of whipped cream in every cup of software
- The features and functions of these products are in flux just as Starbuck’s changes its featured coffee of the day
- The net result is a bunch of ingredients that get blended together with mixed results just like a Starbuck’s super latte triple shot with a dash of nutmeg.
My hunch is that embedded search and information access systems will become the “new” business intelligence hot product in 2010. Who am I watching in this space? MarkLogic looks good. So do Coveo and Exalead. The IBM approach is more like McDonald’s approach to upscale offerings. SAS is struggling in market where math is about as popular as cod liver oil. I’m uncertain about Attivio. I haven’t heard much about their products in the last six months. Lots of excitement in 2010, opines this addled goose.
Stephen Arnold, November 27, 2009
I wish to report to the Department of Commerce that I was not paid in cash or coffee beans to write about what happens when a bunch of names are applied to what is becoming a commodity. I will have to study those bloggers who get paid to write advertorials. That’s a New Year’s resolution for sure, and I don’t need a business intelligence mélange to move forward but I will take a dash of nutmeg.
Microsoft and the Cloud Burger: Have It Your Way
November 19, 2009
I am in lovely and organized Washington, DC, courtesy of MarKLogic. The MarkLogic events pull hundreds of people, so I go where the action is. Some of the search experts are at a search centric show, but search is a bit yesterday in my opinion. There’s a different content processing future and I want to be prowling that busy boulevard, not sitting alone on a bench in the autumn of a market sector.
The MarkLogic folks wanted me to poke my nose into its user meeting. That was a good experience. And now I am cooling my heels for a Beltway Bandit client. I have my watch and my wallet. With peace of mind, I thought I would catch up on my newsreader goodies.
I read with some surprise “Windows Server’s Plan to Move Customers Back Off the Cloud” in beta news. As I understand the news story, Microsoft wants its customers to use the cloud, the Azure service. Then when fancy strikes, the customer can license on premises software and populate big, hot, expensive to maintain servers in the licensee’s own data center. I find the “have it your own way” appealing. I was under the impression that the future was the cloud. If I understand this write up, the cloud is not really the future. The “future” is the approach to computing that has been here since I took my first computer programming class in 1963 or so.
I found this passage in the article interesting:
If you write your code for Windows Server AppFabric, it should run on Windows Azure,” said Ottaway, referring to the new mix-and-match composite applications system for the IIS platform. “What we are delivering in 2010 is a CTP [community technology preview] of AppFabric, called Windows Azure AppFabric, where you should be able to take the exact same code that you wrote for Windows Server AppFabric, and with zero or minimal refactoring, be able to put it up on Windows Azure and run it.” AppFabric for now appears to include a methodology for customers to rapidly deploy applications and services based on common components. But for many of these components, there will be analogs between the on-Earth and off-Earth versions, if you will, such that all or part of these apps may be translated between locales as necessary.
Note the “shoulds”. Also, there’s a “may be”. Great. What does this “have it your own way” mean for enterprise search?
First, I don’t think that the Fast ESP system is going to be as adept as either Blossom, Exalead, or Google at indexing and serving results from the cloud for enterprise customers. The leader in this segment is not Google. I would give the nod to Blossom and Exalead. There’s no “should” with these systems. Both deliver.
Second, the latency for a hybrid application when processing content is going to be an interesting challenge for those brave enough to tackle the job. I recall some issues with other vendors’ hybrid systems. In fact, these performance problems were among the reasons that these vendors are not exactly thriving today. Sorry, I cannot mention names. Use your imagination or sift through the articles I have written about long gone vendors.
Third, Microsoft is working from established code bases and added layers—wrappers, in my opinion—to these chunks of code that exist. That’s an issue for me because weird stuff can happen. Yesterday one Internet service provider told me that his shop was sticking with SQL Server 2000. “We have it under control”, he said. With new layers of code, I am not convinced that those building a cloud and on premises solution using SharePoint 2010 and the “new” Fast ESP search system are going to have stress free days.
In short, more Microsoft marketing messages sound like IBM’s marketing messages. Come to think of it hamburger chains have a similar problem. I think this play is jargon for finding ways to maximize revenues, not efficiencies for customers. When I go to a fast food chain, no matter what I order, the stuff tastes the same and delivers the same health benefits. And there’s a “solution accelerator.” I will have pickles with that. Just my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, November 19, 2009
I hereby disclose to the Internal Revenue Service and the Food and Drug Administration that this missive was written whilst waiting for a client to summon me to talk about topics unrelated to this post. This means that the write up is a gift. Report it as such on your tax report and watch your diet.
Thetus Savanna
November 9, 2009
Directions Magazine published “Thetus Unveils the Savanna Analysis Solution”. Thetus describes itself as “a pioneer of semantic knowledge modeling and discovery software”. The Savanna product, according to the company:
… provides users with a model-centric environment that is optimized for analysis involving multiple perspectives, confidence and detailed lineage tracking. The solution provides extension points at every level of the architecture, allowing customers to adapt models, analysis tasks and user experience to meet their individual needs.
The Savanna technology uses flexible knowledge models uniquely suited to cultural, geo-cultural and Human Terrain analysis. The Savanna framework includes out-of-the-box connectors to leading providers of content management, entity extraction, geospatial analysis and temporal analysis products including MarkLogic, Janya, MetaCarta, and ESRI. These integrations deliver a new level of deployment speed and ease to customers and enable Savanna to address a broad range of structured and unstructured data typical of today’s intelligence process.
For more information, navigate to www.thetus.com.
A freebie, pure and simple. Grrr.
SAP Asserts that Databases May Be Dead
October 29, 2009
For a company whose business is based on databases, the SAP executive’s statement struck me as either prescient, uninformed, or fatalistic. According to ZDNet’s “SAP: Days of the Database Are Numbered”, an SAP executive board member named Hagemann Snabe made this assertion. According to the write up, Mr. Snabe asserted:
as businesses move increasingly towards an “in-demand” world, there will be more demand for solutions that enable information to be accessed faster and faster. “I can imagine a future where people don’t even need a database,” said Hagemann Snabe, who heads up the business solutions and technology division at SAP, one of the world’s largest database developers.
For a company whose technology relies on traditional architectures, I found the remark intriguing. The Google continues to chug forward with its Googley approaches to data management that include infinite rows and other fascinating methods. I have written about companies such as Aster Data, Exalead, InfoBright, and MarkLogic. Each of these companies have technologies that offer data manager options for their customers. Conferences on very large database systems poke into various methods for dealing with petascale data flows.
But SAP!
SAP reported its third quarter 2009 results. The company was able to show a profit but sales were down. How far down? About 31 percent.
Let’s think about this brave new world.
SAP which has had a challenging year will have to rejig its system to deal with a spiffier data management system. That takes money and time. As SAP moves to a different data management system, customers have to be convinced that SAP has what it takes to make this shift. Time is also an issue. SAP has not made significant progress in delivering some core functionality that licensees need and want. One example is an information access system that reduces the time and hassles of finding information within an SAP system. Price hikes won’t calm restive SAP licensees.
In short, I agree that for petascale data management, the Codd database is not the the wrench for the job. The problem is that SAP is getting pressure from different points on the compass. Time may be running out for this large software company anchored firmly to the methods of the past.
Stephen Arnold, October 29. 2009
Do you think someone paid me to suggest that SAP may be in a state of decline?
Gartner and ZL Technologies
October 22, 2009
I zipped through my Overflight output this morning and noticed a story from Silicon Valley Watcher cited in the MarkLogic Web log. A bit of clicking revealed that I was not alone in noticing the item “Gartner’s Magic Quadrant Goes to Court – ZL Technologies Lawsuit”. I don’t know much about lawyers and I know even less about the methods used to populate tables and graphics presented in consulting firm’s reports. I know what I was taught by my boss at Booz, Allen & Hamilton in the 1970s. The methods of other firms are closely guarded secrets.
Consulting is often a marketing game. People often forget this premise of the largely unregulated information niche.
The gist of these Gartner-centric stories is that a company called ZL Technologies alleges damages because of the Gartner firm’s presentation of information. You can read these stories and draw your own conclusions. I located some additional public information, and I will take a look at these on my airplane flight this morning.
Several observations:
- The consulting industry has undergone a dramatic change in the last decade. The emergence of rent-an-expert outfits like the Gerson Lehrman Group, Coleman, and Guidance, among others, make it easy and cheaper to get expert inputs without the big costs levied by large, overhead choked service firms. At the same time, the high end firms—like Booz, Allen & Hamilton—have been struggling internally about how to maintain profits. At Booz, Allen, the outcome of the stress was dividing the firm. Other large consulting firms face pressures as well. Smack in the middle of the rent-an-expert outfits and the dominant high-end outfits are the mid-tier consulting firms. I call these “azure chip firms”, and they are caught between a rock (the top firms like McKinsey and BCG) and a hard place (the rent-an-expert firms). As a result, these mid tier firms have had to find ways to differentiate themselves, generate revenue, and capture headlines. The “reports” some firms issue are means to a revenue end, not pure intellectual efforts.
- Consultants will work overtime to get in the spotlight, build buzz, and become a magnet for sales leads. Consultants who lack star power are like struggling actors who hire an aggressive agent. After a couple of Hollywood projects, I can tell you with confidence that the business methods are pretty darned flexible in La La Land.
- Many companies today look alike. The marketing verbiage is often the same. I know when I was writing the mind numbing Enterprise Search Report, some vendors would offer to assist me in my efforts. I imagine similar offers flow into any firm preparing an industry overview. I recall one outfit that praised a particular CMS. My own experience with this system was that it did not work. The reason the particular CMS was licensed was a direct result of a Web log and consultant who insisted that the product was superior. It wasn’t and I realized that the words often existed in a world different from the reality of the software. In today’s tough economic climate, the line between a profile of a company and marketing collateral is narrow. Consulting firms under pressure may find the fuzziness comfortable. As a result, the reader of a report may not understand fuzziness and see the report as something closer to a PhD student’s thesis. The way to bring clarity to fuzziness is by shaping information to a marketing purpose, not hidden persuaders, just subtle persuaders.
- Companies omitted from influential industry reports may find themselves a bit like a Web site not indexed by Google. If one is not in the report, one does not exist for a certain user slice. Omission, then, is a very powerful editorial decision. I know that I get push back when I tell public relations people who want me to write about their client’s product, “Not my area.” Fortunately no one reads my Web log or my long, dull studies for that matter. When a company has a large client base, the pressure must be many times greater. Humans are quite human; hence the potential for interesting decisions. The answer to the question “How can I gain an advantage?” varies widely from firm to firm.
I have not seen the most recent flock of Gartner magic quadrants. I did learn from a person in Europe that Google continues to drift out of the most desirable quadrant. I found that hard to believe. I spend 90 percent of my time tracking Google’s technology, and in my opinion it is among the leaders in a number of search and content processing sectors. I know that figuring out the technology that makes one vendor superior (successful firm with proprietary technology) to another (a Lucene repackager or a start up with zero track record) is tough. If the person who pointed out Google’s drift in the Gartner quadrant is correct, that interpretation of what the Google possesses is at odds with my research data. This is not surprising. Some of my former colleagues at Booz, Allen & Hamilton gathered data and looked at it in interesting ways in order to find a useful and fresh perspective. That’s why those individuals worked at BAH in the 1970s when the firm was firing on all eight cylinders.
The problem is that most of the people who are “experts” in search and content processing may not know as much as they assume. This is the “they don’t know what they don’t know.” You can see this in the comments to some of my Web log posts. People are not operating from the same fact base as I. Their comments point out that one of my observations is crazy. Yep, if you don’t know what you don’t know, some of my comments do seem crazy. After all, who would market a search system that crashes when it has to process more than 50 million documents? Well, a vendor does in point of fact. Some consulting firms take advantage of this ignorance by making complex issues simple. I have written about the C minus brain that encounters complexity and then reduces it to an absurdly general statement. Sorry. Some methods at Google require knowledge of non Euclidean geometry. I can’t make those numerical recipes “simple”. Others may pluck a handful of new companies from a quick Google search and present them as the latest and greatest. Simplification and the reduction of problems with manifolds to a simple diagram or a grid are fooling themselves, fooling potential licensees, and fooling quite a few “experts”. Fooling is good as long as one is doing stand up at the Comedy Caravan. Fooling is not too helpful in work centric software procurements.
I am not sure where this legal matter will lead. I think that the present economic climate will cause other objections and counter claims to blossom. The net result will be more confusion which, of course, makes it easier for another consultant to cash in.
Part of the present business environment I fear. I have learned to live with this approach to technical information.
Stephen Arnold, October 22, 2009
Dear government watchdogs, I wrote this without compensation. Tess did lick my hand whilst writing this, however. Does that count?
Oracle Upshifts from Search to Enterprise Application Documents
October 14, 2009
The source – Earthtimes – struck me as an unusual one. I wanted to capture this reference before I fly to England, the country with a less than stellar ambiance. The headline that snagged my attention was “Oracle Announces First Comprehensive Approach to Enterprise Application Documents”. I read the story which seemed to be written by a person unfamiliar with the notion of text without dot points. The phrase “Enterprise Application Documents” was unfamiliar to me. I think – and I may be wrong about this – is that EAD refers to a mash up of information in various enterprise systems. When I thought about the announcement, I realized that Oracle wants to get into the enterprise publishing game with Hewlett Packard, MarkLogic, and IBM.
For me, one of the quotes seemed to describe the same wonderful world of information access that many firms are promising customers:
“We are always looking for ways to make Oracle Applications even more powerful, easier to use and simpler to maintain,” said Steve Miranda, senior vice president, Applications Development, Oracle. “Our approach to integrating Enterprise Application Documents into Oracle Applications helps our customers accelerate their business processes within CRM and ERP, find the documents they need faster and manage these documents more efficiently and effectively.”
“Easier” and “simpler to maintain” are highly desirable. In my experience, the word “oracle” does not evoke either term. The article includes a number of links to Oracle information sources. These can be useful because Oracle’s Web search system offer befuddles me.
Stephen Arnold, October 14, 2009
Published without the slightest compensation from Oracle. Sigh.
Oracle Chases Business Intelligence
October 1, 2009
A happy quack to my colleague in Israel. Another useful heads up. This time about Oracle.
Life has been getting tough for the companies hawking old-style relational database management systems. The vendors have been moving into verticals, chasing applications, and pumping up licensing fees. I am surprised to see database appliances poking their noses from corporate research labs. Instead of breaking new ground, these DB appliances are tackling performance problems by throwing hardware at the inherent weaknesses of the row and column systems that once were state of the art. Not any more. New approaches from outfits like Google and clever start ups like Aster Data have shifted the game from checkers to data management chess. One can argue that technology like MarkLogic’s may contribute to the data management revolution. I was not surprised to learn that Oracle has bought an Israeli business intelligence company. The idea seems to be that business intelligence is a hot sector and, probably more important, relies on data stored in RDBMS tables. You can read the Oracle statement here. Globes reported in “Oracle Buys Israeli Business Intelligence Company HyperRoll”:
Last night, Oracle reported that it had acquired HyperRoll Inc., which develops what are known as financial reporting acceleration solutions, that is software that enables an enterprise to gather data for financial reporting faster and thus produce financial statements in a shorter time. Oracle did not disclose financial details of the transaction, which is expected to close in the next few months. HyperRoll was founded in 2000. It has its corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California, and its development center in Omer. Its field is business intelligence (BI), more specifically data warehouse performance acceleration software.
For me the key word is “acceleration”. Oracle is having to find ways around the inherent performance problems petascale data management imposes on dear Dr. Codd’s decades old invention. In my opinion, the Oracle approach is a stop gap measure. Newer approaches are in the market already and it is just a matter of time before the bottom falls out of the RDBMS market. Costs and performance will be the spikes that kill these agility vampires in my view. I wonder if Oracle will make more of a success in business intelligence than it has with its enterprise search initiative. Hot a couple of years ago, the Oracle search system has dropped outside the range of my radar.
Stephen Arnold, October 1, 2009
HP Analysis Urges Mainframe Rip and Replace
October 1, 2009
I read “Staying on Legacy Systems Ends Up Costing IT More” absolutely fascinating. The article appeared on the Ziff Davis Web site. There is a link to a podcast (latency and audio made this tough for me given my age, lousy hearing, and general impatience with serial info streams) and a series of excerpts from the “Briefings Direct” podcast discussion. The sponsor of the podcast was, according to the Web site, is Hewlett Packard. HP is on my radar because the company just merged its personal computer and printer business. I suppose that will make it untenable for me to describe HP as “the printer cartridge company”. I really liked that description, but now HP is a consulting firm and a PC company. Much better I suppose.
I abandoned the audio show and jumped to the transcript which you can obtain by clicking http://interarborsolutions.books.officelive.com/Documents/DoingNothing901.pdf.
The premise of the podcast, in my interpretation, is that smart companies will want to dump legacy hardware and systems for the hot, new hardware and systems available from HP. I understand this type of message. I use them myself. The idea sounds good. The notion of progress is based on the idea that what’s new is better than what came before. I won’t drag out the Jacques Ellul argument that technology creates more technology and more, unexpected problems. I will also ignore the studies of progress such as Gregg Easterbrook’s The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, originally published in December 2003, five years before the economic dominos starting falling in April 2008. I won’t point out that “legacy” is not defined in a way that helped me understand the premise of the discussion. And, I won’t beat too forcefully on the fuzziness of word “cost” as the industry experts use the term. But costs are the core of the podcast, so I will have to make a quick dash through the thicket of accounting methods but not yet.
HP red ink as metaphor for the cost problems of a mainframe to next generation platform solution.
The first idea that snagged me was “cost hasn’t changed”. What changed was the amount of cash available to organizations. I don’t buy this. First, it is not clear what is included in the data to support the generalization. Without an indication of direct and indirects, capital, services, and any other costs that are associated with a legacy system, I can’t let the generalization into the argument. Without this premise in place, the rest of the assertions are on think ice, at least for me.
Second, consider this assertion by one of the HP “transformation” experts:
What’s still there, and is changing today, is the ability to look at a legacy source code application. We have the tools now to look at the code and visualize it in ways that are very compelling. That’s typically one of the biggest obstacles. If you look at a legacy application and the number of lines of code and number of people that are maintaining it, it’s usually obvious that large portions of the application haven’t really changed much. There’s a lot of library code and that sort of thing
My view is that “obvious” is a word that can be used to create a cloud of unknowing. Mainframe apps, if stable, and doing a good enough job may be useful because the application has not changed. As one of my neighbors here in Harrods Creek said, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” In my experience, that applies to mainframe apps that are working. If a mainframe app is broken, then an analysis is required to track down direct and indirect costs, opportunity costs, and fuzzy to be sure, but important going-forward costs. Not much is obvious once one gets rolling down the path of the rip-and-replace approach. In my experience, the reason mainframe apps continue to chug along in insurance companies, certain travel sectors, and some manufacturing firms is because they are predictable, known, and stable. Jumping into a whizzy new world may be fun, but such a step may not be prudent within the context of the business. But HP and its wizards aren’t known for their own rock solid business decisions. I am thinking of the ball drop with AltaVista.com and the most recent mash up of the printer and the PC industry. Ink revenue will make HP’s PC revenues soar, but it won’t change the nature of that low margin business.
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