Sachin Sinha

Sneak Peek into expressor's new & free data integration application, expressor Studio

2010-10-21T20:50:00.000-05:00

I had a chance to attend the launch event webinar of expressor's new & free data integration application, expressor Studio. To be clear, the version that was previewed is a beta version and GA of this new tool is not expected until the end of this year.

expressor has been around for some time now and hence it is expected that the core of its product will not change much. This release is more geared towards the developer application expressor Studio. Expressor Repository and expressor Data Processing Engine remain more or less the same. The free version of the software though will include both the Studio and the Data Processing Engine.

The improvements, or it should rather be said that rewrite, is mostly restricted to Studio. However, the improvements over the last version are pretty significant and it would be well appreciated by those who are currently using expressor in their data integration projects.

Some of the most significant improvements coming with this release are;

MS Office style user interface that uses ribbon design quite heavily. It would be especially liked by those who play with SQL Server day in and out
Like MS Office, tasks on the right hand side give you cues for what needs to be completed
Notion of Projects and Libraries to allow greater reuse of components
Simple drag & drop functionality to create mappings and data flows
Background validation
User friendly transform editor with the ability to modify the Lua datascripts

This is in addition to some of the core features that expressor provides in its platform, like;

Reusable business rules
Out of the box connectivity with a wide range of RDBMS and appliances
Parallel processing
Semantic mapping
Support for Regular Expressions

Beta version of this release will be available November 1 at www.ExpressorStudio.com. At the cost of free it is an excellent product to get started on small and mid size data integration projects.

Taxonomy Webinar Series by PPC

2010-10-20T20:55:00.010-05:00

Today's business users work with a range of information management tools designed to capture and provide access to critical business information. However, that information is of little value if users can't find what they need. Business taxonomies can provide solutions to an organization's knowledge management challenges. Although the concept of taxonomies is not new, organizations are beginning to focus increased attention on the design and development of intuitive and sustainable taxonomies that will serve their end users by making it easy to find the information they need in a single place. Today's users have come to expect a simple way to both search and browse for their information, but still many organizations do not know where to begin in the design of such a system.

This webinar series focuses on the design and management of business taxonomies for the storage of information within systems, as well as the overall findability through search and browse of the information your end users seek.

This series is comprised of 4 sessions. The first session in the series will provide an introduction to taxonomy and metadata benefits, design concepts, and strategies. The subsequent sessions will detail methodologies on 1) how to run taxonomy design workshops within your own organization, 2) how to design taxonomies from start to finish, and 3) how to ensure the appropriate maintenance and management of those taxonomies over time.

Nov. 5, 11:30am-12:30pm

Introduction to Business Taxonomies
Click here to register.

Nov. 8, 11:30am-12:30pm

Taxonomy Workshops
Click here to register.

Nov. 10, 11:30am-12:30pm

Practical Taxonomy Design
Click here to register.

Nov. 12, 11:30am-12:30pm

Taxonomy Governance and Maintenance
Click here to register.

Click here to view more information about series description, as well as details on each session.

Expressor's launching brand new free data integration application, expressor Studio

2010-10-15T21:48:00.002-05:00

Expressor has been around for some time now. Expressor was started by a bunch of ex Kalido people and they created a niche for their offering in the Microsoft Data Integration market, especially in the SMB market. They are ready to launch their brand new and free data integration application, expressor Studio. According to expressor this tool will "provide game-changing ease-of-use with a drag-and-drop and wizard-driven interface that enables developers to easily connect to their data sources or targets, map data to common business names and types, and design complex data flow applications in minutes". To add to that, it will be free to download and use. If you are interested in learning more, expressor will host a webinar on Wednesday, October 20th, 2010 for a live demo of the tool.

Master Data Management - Some Useful Links

2008-03-24T21:01:00.002-05:00

Managing master data, part one

Master-data management – managing key sets of data centrally instead of in application silos – is becoming a element of information management. But where to begin?
By Mike Fleckenstein

Hit the Ground Running with Operational MDM

By focusing on an operational master data management (MDM) approach, one can achieve 80 percent of the value of a traditional MDM implementation with only 20 percent of the effort. The next generation of data integration and master data management tools will accomplish this by providing a virtual MDM registry via inline data services.

MDM is Not Enough - Semantic Enterprise is Needed

This article introduces the concept of semantic enterprise and outlines a connection between semantic enterprise and master data management (MDM) concepts. The article also shows that successful transitioning to semantic enterprise requires significant improvements in enterprise metadata and especially in business metadata management. It explains the importance of supporting an enterprise-level semantic continuum from both business and IT communities by committing to development of enterprise architecture tenets that would bring both communities to a more synergetic environment.
By Semyon Axelrod

Why You Need Master Data Management

The vendor hype machine is up and running, and master data management (MDM) will be in your favorite software salesperson’s messaging and in their quotas by the time you read this. That hype drives business for a while, but soon MDM will have to prove its mettle.
By William McKnight

MDM in the Real World

By now we all know about master data management (MDM) systems and how they can bring about stunning business results. We’ve heard how they generate and maintain an enterprise-wide “system of record” that contains the consistent, reliable information necessary to perform vital business functions across a large organization. And, we’ve heard how implementing a strong MDM strategy can increase revenue and profits, improve customer service, reduce time to market, enhance regulatory compliance and simplify reporting and business intelligence.
By Marty Moseley

Upcoming Webcasts - 2008-03-10

2008-03-09T10:07:00.000-05:00

Back to Business: How Business Modeling Rationalizes Data Warehousing "A new alternative to the data-centric approach is a model-driven approach using a business model-driven architecture. Hear Neil Raden and Cliff Longman explain how this new way of thinking has proven highly effective in delivering useful results to the business in a short period of time."
Real-Time Information On Demand "The ability to capture and deliver accurate, trusted data to the right people at the right time can be a significant competitive advantage for enterprises looking to streamline their business processes and improve customer service."
Best Practices for Deploying Collaborative BI "Best practices and key issues surrounding collaborative BI."

Kalido Debuts its Business Modeling Tool - Free Download

2008-02-25T18:11:00.000-05:00

Recently Kalido debuted its business modeling tool aptly named Business Information Modeler. This means that business modeling has a new home in form of this tool. Before people used to resort to all sorts of drawing applications from Vizio to PowerPoint for their business modeling needs. The good thing about this tool apart from slick interface that introduces gesture-based modeling, is its ability to connect to Kalido platform and import the model right into it, saving weeks worth of work. It can also push changes as and when it happens in the model itself.

Kalido also started a Google groups for this modeler. You can get a free copy of this tool as well as insights from seasoned business modelers if you join The Business Modeling Community Forum at Google. Worth a look for those in business modeling area.

TDWI Las Vegas

2008-02-22T13:41:00.001-05:00

Along with some other colleagues, I spent considerable amount of last week at Vegas. We were there as exhibitors in TDWI World Conference. It was held in the customary Caesars Palace. While the actual conference goes on for almost a week, exhibitors part is restricted to couple of days. Two red eye flights and an exhausting schedule made sure that I was tired as hell by the time I landed back in Washington.

TDWI Las Vegas again proved why it is considered a marquee event in the data warehousing and business intelligence world. Conference was attended by a good mix of mid and senior level staff from companies across North America. Some were there just for fun, however a number of them were seriously looking for new vendors, tools, technologies and methodologies. We generated considerable attention being the only services company on display in exhibitors arena.

A few things stood out in this year's event;

Everybody is looking for MDM solution

Almost everybody has got some form of Data Warehouse in their enterprise, albeit not without any problems

Companies have data warehouses and business intelligence solutions though without any Enterprise Information Management strategy

Companies are not able to maximize the benefits of data warehouses since they can not use its data across multiple applications

One theme that is common across these issues is lack of foresight in implementing Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence solutions. It is time companies gave way to DW/BI 2.0. It is time that Data Warehouses and Business Intelligence implementations serve a greater purpose than just supporting reporting to upper management.

Our stay in Vegas ended with a dinner at Bradley Ogden hosted by our technology partner Kalido. Too bad we could not stay for the full course or else we would have missed our red eye.

First Day at KUG

2007-10-07T22:10:00.000-05:00

When I started from DC this morning, I knew it was going to be a long day. I took a US Airways 10:30 shuttle to get in Boston around noon. KUG is being hosted at Hyatt Regency in downtown. By the time I checked in to hotel I was starving. Fortunately hotel was in AT&T 3G network area. I immediately got connected in 5 mins and found out this Indian place called Tantric. They had a decent buffet which was enough to fill my tummy for the rest of the day.

Our Corporate Communications department had already shipped all the material to hotel. Now I had to claim it back from the concierge desk. After claiming my stuff I ran into Clare Waldron - co-ordinator for KUG 2007. She told me that we have to set up our booth just for tonight on a different floor. Apparently Hyatt had double booked their conference area which was supposed to be used for KUG. Talk about professional hotel management.

Today was a partner's day. There were mostly partners setting up their booths apart from a few customers. Our customer from Fannie Mae was there. They are doing this year's first customer presentation tomorrow.

Around 6:30 we were called for a cocktail reception by Bill Hewitt, CEO, Kalido in hotel presidential suite. Only key partners and a few key customers were present there. That was the first time I met with Bill.

Around 7:30 we left for a dinner for Kalido partners. Dinner was hosted at Grill 23. I heard nice things about this place from a number of people and it lived up to the expectations.

It was a long day today and tomorrow is going to be even longer. Our presentation is in the later half of the day. There are other breakout sessions which sound enticing. Let's see if I am able to make it to any of them.

Kalido User Group 2007

2007-09-12T22:07:00.002-05:00

It's that time of the year again. It's time to get ready for Kalido User Group conference 2007. Kalido customers, current and prospective would have an excellent opportunity to learn from other Kalido customers who are driving business value from enterprise data warehousing and master data management solutions - whether in operational cost savings, increased sales, or improved business insight.

My company, Project Performance Corporation, also happens to be a Gold Sponsor for 2007 edition of KUG. Hence it will also be good opportunity for current and prospective customers to visit the partner pavilion where the latest solutions and services available will be demonstrated by PPC and other Kalido technology and systems integrator partner community.

So, see you all at KUG 2007.

No SAP DW, No Oracle BI, but Kalido. Why?

2007-08-20T16:25:00.000-05:00

I am asked this question a number of times. I give the same answer that Bill Hewitt, Kalido's CEO and President, gave to Jim Ericson in a recent interview. It goes like this;

"All the ERP vendors are saying it's about SOA. SAP says we can provide everything: middleware, information management, transaction systems. Oracle says the same thing. What customer in their right mind wants to go back to buying every piece of their stack from one vendor? If you want to deliver your applications with a database flavor, then Oracle is a great place to go. If you want to deliver your middleware with a manufacturing flavor, SAP is a great place to go. But SAP has rolled out their second try at MDM [master data management], and it's failing because while they understand applications, they don't understand data. Oracle understands data but they don't understand applications. What we promote is maintaining separation between the five layers of your IT environment that move at different speeds: your infrastructure, your security, your information management, your applications and your user interface. Eventually, SOA is going to be the technology that brings all that together, but I don't think you should need to have your information management come out of your transaction systems or vice versa. What customers want is interoperability between the layers of the IT stack so they can make changes that suit their environment as they grow or shrink or change in other ways."

Managing Compliance with Master Data Management

2007-08-18T23:04:00.000-05:00

DMReview published an excellent article on How Financial Services Firms are Improving Adherence to Regulations using Master Data Management. It says, U.S. corporations spent an average of $4.6 million implementing Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) section 404 controls in their first year of implementation, and Forrester Research estimates the five year cost of Basel II implementation for the largest banks to be $150 million. The size and scale of investment on compliance is forcing organizations to invest in technology solutions. It goes further by saying, considering that SOX, Basel II and the USA Patriot Act all share the need for reliable control of master or reference data, leading Financial Services firms are looking to master data management (MDM) as the foundation for managing regulatory compliance. By creating a centralized master reference hub, organizations can deliver the most reliable, complete views of key business data within their existing business processes and more importantly leverage these data assets within operational business processes to remain in compliance, adhere to various privacy requirements and simplify the reporting process.

Among all the new data technology initiatives, MDM is one that is getting a lot of attention because of its ability to make compliance and reporting a whole lot easier.

Kalido Error: -5092 : Handle does not belong to given list

2007-08-01T21:33:00.000-05:00

This error appears when you try to import a transaction file definition. The only reason an import of transaction file definition throws this error is that there are existing transaction batches associated with the transaction file definition. This is a bug with 8.3 release of Kalido DIW. It will be fixed in the subsequent release of DIW. In the meantime you would have to delete associated transaction batches in order to successfully migrate a transaction file definition.

My Alma Mater is Rising - Now 13th Worldwide

2007-07-16T07:45:00.000-05:00

My alma mater, Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland at College Park has been rising steadily in the ranking charts in last few years. Not only has the U.S. News & World Report survey this spring ranked the Clark School 10th in the nation among public engineering schools and 16th among all engineering schools, but the Princeton Review has ranked us 6th in the nation and the Institute of Higher Education and Center for World-Class Universities has ranked us 13th worldwide. Nariman Farvardin, Dean, Clark School, predicts that this trend will steadily continue, culminating in Clark’s arrival among the top 5 public programs in the nation. I would say that Nariman you are on the track.

Kalido Setup and Default Passwords of Oracle Schemas

2007-07-06T09:30:00.000-05:00

When setting up Kalido for the first time it asks you to create a number of schemas in the database. It also expects them to have default passwords, e.g. goldeneyex for WHSUSR or gatekeeper for GATEKEEPER schema.

However, there are strict password guidelines these days in almost every organization. A strict DBA group would never let you have the kind of passwords mentioned above. If DBAs do decide to have difference passwords for these schemas then it would be a problem. When you create a Kalido Gatekeeper it goes to gatekeeper schema and grabs the encrypted username and password for WHSUSR schema from USER_DETAILS table. If you have changed the password of GATEKEEPER schema itself then you can override that by checking the option ‘Force the GateKeeper to connect to the database as a specific user’ and then supplying the schema name and new password. However, even after that, gatekeeper configuration will fail. It fails because of the fact that it grabs the encrypted password for WHSUSR schema from USER_DETAILS table that equals the default password of WHSUSR, goldeneyex.

You would think that it is not a problem. You will use the KSetPass utility and change the password of WHSUSR schema. However, that would not work because for KSetPass utility to work you would need gatekeeper configured first. So now you are into a vicious circle. There are two ways to solve this puzzle. One is by asking Kalido Support to give you encrypted value of WHSUSR password and then update the USER_DETAILS table manually. Another way is by asking your DBA team to change the password of WHSUSR schema to default goldeneyex. Once you have configured your gatekeeper they can change it back to whatever they want and then you can change it accordingly using KSetPass utility.

The key here is to get your Kalido gatekeeper configured first and foremost. Once the gatekeeper is there, you can do pretty much whatever you want.

Strategies for Testing Data Warehouse Applications

2007-06-26T12:59:00.000-05:00

June issue of DM Review magazine has an interesting article on Data Warehouse Testing. This topic has always been up for debate. Traditional testing teams want to test a Data Warehouse like any other transactional systems. Whereas Data Warehouse gurus would always suggest testing the input and output. This article lists seven goals for a successful data warehouse testing, namely;

Data completeness. Ensures that all expected data is loaded.
Data transformation. Ensures that all data is transformed correctly according to business rules and/or design specifications.
Data quality. Ensures that the ETL application correctly rejects, substitutes default values, corrects or ignores and reports invalid data.
Performance and scalability. Ensures that data loads and queries perform within expected time frames and that the technical architecture is scalable.
Integration testing. Ensures that the ETL process functions well with other upstream and downstream processes.
User-acceptance testing. Ensures the solution meets users' current expectations and anticipates their future expectations.
Regression testing. Ensures existing functionality remains intact each time a new release of code is completed.

This is an interesting read for those who have struggled to find the right balance while implementing strategies for a data warehouse testing.

Restoring from Oracle Dump Without any Data

2007-06-25T19:15:00.000-05:00

I was trying to restore an Oracle backup dump the other day. The only catch was that I didn't want any data in the restore. However, large amount of data in the dump would have made the whole process last for a whole day ... no kidding. I started Googling around but unfortunately there was little to no information available. Once I found the solution I decided to share it for everybody's benefit.

Command for restoring from a dump file is age old imp command. So I am not going to go into that any further. What will do the trick for you is rows flag. If you want to import all the table structures with no data, use the flag as below

rows=n

Default for this flag is Y, so if you don't use this flag it will import all the data.

koshish karne walon ki haar nahin hoti …

2007-02-12T12:59:00.000-05:00

An inspirational poem from Harivansh Rai Bachchan. Thanks to Vishva for the lyrics

Lehron se Darkar nauka par nahin hoti,
koshish karne walon ki haar nahin hoti

Nanhi cheenti jab daana lekar chalti hai,
chadhti deewaron par,
sau bar phisalti hai.
Man ka vishwas ragon mein saahas bharta hai,
chadhkar girna,
girkar chadhna na akharta hai.

Akhir uski mehnat bekar nahin hoti,
koshish karne walon ki haar nahin hoti.

Dubkiyan sindhu mein gotakhor lagata hai,
ja ja kar khali haath lautkar aata hai
Milte nahi sahaj hi moti gehre paani mein,
badhta dugna utsah isi hairani mein.

Muthi uski khali har bar nahin hoti,
koshish karne walon ki haar nahi hoti.

Asaflta ek chunauti hai,
ise sweekar karo,
kya kami reh gayi,
dekho aur sudhar karo.
Jab tak na safal ho,
neend chain ko tyago tum,
Sangharsh ka maidan chhodkar mat bhago tum.

Kuch kiye bina hi jai jaikar nahin hoti,
koshish karne walon ki haar nahin hoti.

- Harivansh Rai Bacchan

Think Big, Start Small

2007-01-09T22:27:00.000-05:00

This is my second post in the series where I will go through a real life MDM (Master Data Management) implementation. The problem at hand and in fact generic to all MDM implementations is the presence of multiple operational and transactional systems. In this case however, it gets worse. As the cases progress from one system to another they are manually entered in the next system in the chain and hence all the problems. In our case there are four systems in all, w, x, y and z. Cases progress from w through z in that order. In each system cases are entered manually and these systems are as distinct and disconnected from each other as North and South Pole.

When starting any MDM initiative in such scenarios it would be tempting to put all the systems in project scope. But, that would have disaster written all over it. It is heartening to know that scope of this phase of MDM implementation has been scaled down to system y. This also doesn't mean that our vision would get so narrow that we would not even look at other systems. The right balance is to start the implementation from one system but the design should be flexible enough to accommodate remaining systems in coming phases.

Right now we are looking at data elements that are going to be part of the Gold Copy in this phase. In addition to that we are looking at data elements from other systems, so that we keep them in the back of our mind when we are working on the design and model.

Of all the problems in Enterprise Information Management MDM is one where taking it one piece at a time would be highly beneficial and effective.

Real World Master Data Management (MDM) Implementation

2007-01-03T15:41:00.000-05:00

Okay! So you have been to conferences and attended the webinars. But how many real world MDM implementations you have come across. One or may be none. MDM is such a hot buzz word these days that every possible vendor out there has started offering a solution based on a technologies that were stacked together in a hurry to cash in on the concept.

Just a few weeks ago we started a project for Master Data Management. When I was starting this project I started googling for any real world case studies on Master Data Management implementations. What I found was way less than my expectations. I thought it may not be a bad idea if I blog through the whole implementation process. I would share as much detail as possible on the implementation piece, keeping some of the less interesting details about the organization and the data hidden. Keep reading …

Success Factors in the Implementation of a KM System

2006-05-07T23:01:00.000-05:00

Below I present a set of factors required to exist for a successful implementation of a KM system, compiled from.

Knowledge friendly culture – The organization values learning and innovation, and establishes appropriate incentives and reward systems. People collaborate and have a positive attitude towards knowledge. When there is free flow of knowledge from other employees, individuals tend to respond in the same manner.

Opportunities – Employees must be placed in an environment where they have opportunities to use their capabilities to the fullest.

Motivation – Employees must be motivated to share their knowledge with other people in the organization. They must be convinced that their sharing of knowledge will be valuable to the organization and, most importantly, to themselves.

Concrete shared objectives – Develop a broadly shared understanding of the enterprise’s mission, current direction, and the role of the individual in support of the enterprise and of the individual’s own interests.

Knowledge base – The knowledge base should be managed the same way as physical assets. Time and effort should be invested in designing, building and maintaining its content.

Technical infrastructure – All knowledge management systems should be linked to other information systems, providing necessary security features.

Effective governance for the KM practices – Continuous monitoring, evaluation, and guidance of the KM activities and their plans, results and opportunities.

Interdisciplinary problem solving working groups – Create problem-solving groups comprised of people from a variety of disciplines. This will transfer the knowledge from one discipline to another, as well as provide solutions to interdisciplinary problems in decreased time.

Multiple channels for knowledge transfer - A variety of channels for knowledge transfer are desirable, as each adds value in a different way. It is particularly important to provide opportunities for face-to-face contact, as well as electronic forms of communication.

Measurement - Measuring the usage of the KM system and its efficiency is essential to the accurate assessment and improvement of knowledge management programs in order to be able to increase the value or prolong the duration of the sustainable competitive advantage.

Empowerment – Employees must be given permission to innovate, improvise and stretch enterprise policies and practices beyond the predetermined scopes.

Source: Knowledge Management in Software Engineering

Fundamental Questions Related to Storing and Sharing Knowledge Items

2006-04-30T23:01:00.000-05:00

Any approach that intends to capture, store, and disseminate knowledge items must address some fundamental questions:

1. Assuming that individuals have personal knowledge repositories, how can these repositories be shared? One approach would be to change the corporate culture and allow co-workers to search each other’s personal repositories. While this might be a viable solution in some cases, especially where one employee is a back up for another employee, it is not a generally viable solution due to other problems. One such problem is that personal repositories often contain items that are not of general interest. Another issue is that some kind of information filtering would be needed. In some cases, filtering might not be sufficient and some kind of packaging would be necessary so that the content becomes useful for a third party.

2. How can the common repository be populated? One answer is to enable employees to contribute from their personal repositories. This is a relatively simple problem from a technology point of view, because employees are asked to share something they already have. However, it might raise a psychological issue if people do not want to give away their personal knowledge. Moreover, if employees are asked first to capture their own knowledge and then to share it, the request is likely to encounter resistance. An example is asking employees to share their lessons learned, which would not be hard to do had they already collected these lessons.

3. How must the common (organizational) repository be organized so that it provides easy search and retrieval of knowledge items? There are many different approaches for organizing knowledge items. Some are based on AI techniques (such as case-based reasoning), some are based on advanced probabilistic indexing techniques, and others are based on a combination of manual and automatic generation of taxonomies.

4. How can people be persuaded to use the repository? In many cases this is more a cultural problem than a technological one. Software reuse, for example, is a cultural problem because software engineers do not trust code developed by others. Another issue is that in many organizational settings it is easier to find someone to ask for a solution instead of searching in repositories for answers. A third problem is having empty repositories. Inherently, any repository is nearly empty when first introduced, which gives potential users the perception that the repository and the whole initiative of sharing are worthless. This, in turn, prevents them from adding to the repository, because nobody wants to add items to something that is perceived as worthless.

5. How are contributions from users collected so that the repository evolves? Feedback from users is essential for improving the repository and the process.

6. How are usage and content of the repository analyzed and how can new knowledge be synthesized, based on this analysis? The initial seed of a repository is likely to be relatively raw material. Raw material would be lessons learned, incident reports, defect reports, project post-mortems, frequently asked questions with answers, results from projects, etc. While this raw material is useful by itself, it is also desirable to analyze and synthesize it into more refined knowledge items.

Source: Knowledge Management in Software Engineering

How blogs and wikis can help knowledge management

2006-04-20T23:01:00.000-05:00

The e-consultancy site offers advice on many e-business topics. In a recent post Wayne Robinson discusses how blogs and wikis can help knowledge management. Wayne writes, “From my window, I can see the great cathedral of York Minster,” which certainly makes me envious. He goes on to link the building of this cathedral to how knowledge is gained, including the socialization, externalization, and then the concept of combination.

“Combination is the process of creating more complex and systematic sets of explicit knowledge - it is combined, edited or processed to create new knowledge. Blogs can aid in this process firstly by making the explicit knowledge available in the first place, and then making it possible to add to what exists through linking, quoting or commenting. A wiki enables rapid creation of explicit knowledge, but also makes it incredibly easy to edit and combine. And both provide a readily-accessible store of the new knowledge.”

He then goes on to discuss how knowledge is externalized and adds:

“By providing a way of creating explicit knowledge from the store of tacit knowledge around the organisation, blogs and wikis can aid the internalisation process. Reading the progress of a project through a blog archive, or following a procedure that’s been documented in a wiki enables an individual to convert this into the tacit knowledge that will allow them to be effective in their roles. But having internalised the explicit knowledge, this can then lead to a new spiral of knowledge creation - tacit knowledge accumulated by the individual can be the trigger for new knowledge creation when it is shared with others.”

There is more and further suggested readings including Managing Knowledge: An Essential Reader, published by the Open University and Sage Publications.

Twelve key features for your business portal

2006-04-12T16:08:00.000-05:00

TechTarget has compiled a basic list of Twelve key features for your business portal. I say basic because today's intranet or extranet portals have grown beyond these basic features. To really get the employees, partners and customers into the portal and retain them, portal would need to have some extra savvy features. Next post on this blog will go into detail on those. For now, TechTarget says;

Features for the extranet

There is no one answer to which features are mandatory and which are optional in portal design. Despite the lack of agreement on a single list, everyone agrees that there are several important features that you should consider when setting your extranet portal strategy. Those features include:

* Search: Your search functionality should be able to query both structured and unstructured content by keywords. Structured data are the databases and transactional systems, such as an ERP system. Unstructured content includes all of the office documents, proposals, and other information that cannot be easily entered into a database.
* Consistent, easy-to-use interface: Portals typically have a consistent interface which flows from the home page down through every area of the portal. The interface is typically designed specifically to make using the portal very easy. This may include breadcrumbing to link to higher levels in the hierarchy; and hovering menus, which allow for an expanded list of links.
* Minimal client deployment: Portals typically do not require that the users install new software. This generally means that portals are Web-based.
* Discussions: Some portals provide discussion forums where users can interact with one another and with the portal host. These forums are designed to strengthen the relationship between users and the host organization.
* Aggregation: Pulling links and content together into a single place helps users know where to go if they are looking for information. Aggregation allows a user to interact with several systems from one single user interface.
* Alerts: Users can sign up for e-mail notification when the information that they are interested in changes. This can include both key performance indicator changes and changes in information within documents. Alerts shift the model of user interaction from a pull model, where users must go check the portal, to a push model, where they will be informed when something of interest on the portal changes.
* Self service: Portals can be a home for a variety of self-service applications, which allow customers, employees, and others to take care of their own needs.

With the features listed above you can create an interactive environment where clients and other partners can find what they are looking for and interact in an easy-to-use way that should increase users of your extranet.

Features for the intranet

In addition to the features that you should consider for an extranet there are special considerations for intranet deployments. You should consider additional features for your intranet, because intranet users typically stay connected for longer periods of time than extranet users. The additional features include:

* Digital dashboard: A dashboard lets you display key status indicators for several business processes and systems on a single screen, giving the user a quick overview of overall status and allowing rapid identification of problems. Digital dashboards offer an opportunity for executives to get a complete view of the overall landscape of the organization, including portions of the organization that cannot be reduced to a set of key performance indicators.
* Personalization: The ability for groups and individual users to customize the way that the information is displayed. Filtering content to the information that a group is interested in and being able to change the location of the information on the screen is considered an important way in which portals create a user-friendly experience.
* Knowledge management:Your employees hold the keys to most of the information in your organization. Portals provide a repository for the information that employees have developed through experience. Portals help to broaden the usefulness or leverage of the knowledge that the organization already possesses.
* Collaboration:Some portals provide tools necessary to facilitate better collaboration. This might include the presence of information to help identify when coworkers are available, or lists to help organize tasks, events, and announcements.
* Distributed control:One of the challenges that many IT organizations face is trying to maintain their existing intranet systems. Distributed control via a content management system allows individual owners to manage the content aspects of the portal in their areas.

Creating a Knowledge Sharing Culture

2006-04-10T20:07:00.000-05:00

A critical factor for knowledge and experience sharing is that management creates trust amongst employees, and between employees and management. It should be noted, though, that this is a long-term goal. The fear that information can be interpreted and used against individuals has been acknowledged in other aspects of software engineering, for example in measurement. A solution to this problem is, for example, the one proposed by the Experience Factory (EF) approach. EF clearly states that data collected by individuals must be anonymous and should never be used to judge them.

The core values promoted by the EF for establishing a sharing culture are based on the fundamentals of learning. In order to improve, employees need to learn from past experience, and in order for employees to learn, the organization needs to create a learning environment. The characteristics of a learning environment are that it is allowed to make mistakes and learn from them. Experience is not hidden or traded, but freely given to the employee who needs it. Experience is collected, not in order to replace, degrade or evaluate people, but in order to help them (e.g., help them remember; help them collaborate; and help them organize, spread and share data, information, knowledge, and experience). People are encouraged to share experience and help others, and are rewarded based on how much they share.

Learning and improvement can only occur in an environment where it is possible to obtain feedback about the outcome of various activities. A learning organization creates feedback loops on several levels and the design of the experience management system must allow, and even enforce, feeding data back to the system. An example of feedback loops is an honest dialogue between employees in the organization. Another way of creating feedback loops is the principle of iteration, i.e., the work is iterated and improved in steps. Iteration also facilitates removing defects early in the lifecycle.

An example of EF implementation can be found at Fraunhofer Center For Experimental Software Engineering, Maryland (FC-MD). FC-MD has implemented the EF in order to leverage its employees’ knowledge and experience. FC-MD uses several strategies to set the right culture in order to encourage employees to share and use knowledge and experience. The first strategy was to establish corporate core values that explicitly address and support the core values of an experience factory. Another strategy is to weave experience-related activities into the regular work process and leverage what employees are already doing. One example of such activities is the project presentation, where project managers actively collect experiences and present them to the rest of the organization. The project presentation is packaged in a way that helps new employees learn about projects and facilitates project analysis. In order to show that management supports these activities, a special project account has been set up to which employees charge all activities related to the experience base, so that these activities do not increase the cost of their current projects. Employees’ contribution to this initiative and to the experience base is a criterion for the individual annual performance evaluation.

Plumtree Ceased to Exist, Now A Part of Aqualogic Brand

2005-10-21T22:49:00.000-05:00

Plumtree ceased to exist as an independent organization last night. This morning you will notice that www.plumtree.com redirects to BEA.

Also note the new product will be known as AquaLogic Interaction, and is one piece of the AquaLogic brand. Internal sources confirm that with the exception of top leadership, the Plumtree corporate infrastructure (Sales, Support, PSO, and Engineering etc.) remain intact.

I encourage those looking for more information to look at the new FAQ

A Fine Graft onto Good Rooting Stock – The Fruit Should Be Tasty

2005-09-09T22:47:00.000-05:00

Even after two weeks, acquisition of the last of the pure-play enterprise portal vendors, Plumtree, is making news. The reason is obvious, unlike its two former rivals, Epicentric and Corechange, it was not taken by an Enterprise Content Management vendor (Vignette and Open Text in the case of the others), and rather it has been snapped up by BEA Systems, Inc. According to Mike Davis of Butler Group, this is the best fit of the lot.

He further goes on to say “this acquisition is not just an opportunity to buy market share, as BEA has itself also recently been seen as an acquisition target, with questions about its branding and direction being raised by financial, as well as IT analysts. The running of Plumtree’s operation as a business unit, and the exploitation of its Intellectual Property to add value to other BEA deployments will demonstrate whether BEA has the strength, and the ‘nous’ (just like Plumtree to this point), to go it alone, and remain independent.”

Plumtree acquisition marks the end of an era

2005-08-31T22:46:00.000-05:00

A lot of speculation and analysis is going on this deal. With the acquisition of Plumtree in a $200 million cash deal, BEA Systems has plucked the last remaining pure-play vendor from the portal market. Butler Group says that with Plumtree in its offering, 2005 would be the year BEA joined Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle in the "Outperform" category of the portal market.

TechWeb says that “BEA is a year behind Plumtree on the .Net side; this acquisition collapses the time line of getting that value to market.” With the portal becoming the point of integration with the enterprise BEA needed this to get out of their bread-and-butter JAVA alignment.

Internet News says that with pure players taking a beating in the last couple of years it was pretty evident that Plumtree would be picked up by a giant.

And Peter Abrahams at it-analysis.com has summed it up right;

Both sides are successful companies.

The overlap in functionality is small enough not to be an encumbrance to the integration of the Plumtree product line into BEA.

Plumtree comes with .Net expertise which BEA needs in order to provide a complete solution to their customers.

Plumtree also comes with a greater bias towards the business user rather than developer and BEA has begun to move in that direction as well.

Enterprises have been moving towards SOA and are keen to purchase as much of the solution from one vendor as possible. The inclusion of Plumtree in the BEA portfolio makes that much easier.

Linux is IN

2005-08-31T13:47:00.000-05:00

These days I am exploring the beautiful world of Linux. The more I explore it the more I like it. After using it for sometime now, I am realizing that why Developers and Architects around the world are increasingly creating solutions on Linux platform. My quest with Linux is also powered on the fact that Plumtree with its new version, which is due in November, would also run on Linux.

During these days, one resource that has been there all the time for help is Linux Pocket Guide by O’Reilly. I would give two thumbs up to this book. It is especially for those who have just started using Linux and need help with figuring out how to accomplish different tasks in this OS.

Read a review of Linux Pocket Guide by O’Reilly

BEA TO ACQUIRE PLUMTREE SOFTWARE FOR USD$200 MILLION

2005-08-22T22:44:00.000-05:00

Combination to Create the Multi-Platform Portal Leader
BEA Systems, Inc., and Plumtree Software, Inc., today announced that the companies have entered into a definitive agreement under which BEA will acquire Plumtree for approximately USD$200 million in cash. By combining the Plumtree and BEA portal portfolios, BEA will be able to better provide customers with improved enterprise productivity by offering both collaborative and transactional portals across multiple platforms and application servers, a press release from BEA said.

Under terms of the agreement, BEA will pay USD$5.50 per share, in cash, plus the assumption of outstanding Plumtree options, for a total transaction value of approximately USD$200 million.

Upon close of the transaction, Plumtree will become a part of a new BEA product unit. BEA Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President, Mark Carges, and Plumtree Software Chief Executive Officer, John Kunze, will lead the transition..

Network Computing says Fuego is the Master of the Domain

2005-08-19T22:43:00.000-05:00

Network Computing (NWC) recently started a task of evaluating BPM suites. In their Green Bay, Wis., NWC Inc. business applications lab, they put together a dream team of nine BPM software vendors: Bluespring Software, Computer Associates, Fuego, Lombardi Software, Oracle, Pegasystems, Savvion, Tibco Software and Ultimus. They had invited nearly 20 to play, but many didn't meet their qualifications. BEA Systems, FileNet and Microsoft declined; Fujitsu and Metastorm came too late; and Appian, Chordiant Software and Vitria Technology expressed interest by never sent them their software, according to their report which released last week.

What they came out with? In their own words “Fuego's product proved the master of our BPM game and earned our NWC Inc. seal of approval, with the suites from Savvion, Oracle and CA close on its heels. FuegoBPM's simulation and process-management capabilities are extensive, its system integration and manual task features are broad and embody reuse as a default, and its BAM capabilities are open to third-party tools as well as its included toolset. Savvion BusinessManager was hampered by a weaker BAM implementation and fewer human integration options, while Oracle BPEL Process Manager was held back by its simulation and narrower process-management capabilities. CA's not-so-clever CleverPath integration and simulation kept it from the top.”

Do you know what you know?

2005-07-12T22:33:00.000-05:00

I came across this nice article about how Government - in particular, US NAVY - dealing with Knowledge Management these days. They have realized that, "Simply aggregating knowledge turned out not to be enough, however. The person requiring data from such a great repository would be seeking the proverbial needle in the haystack. More recently, knowledge management thinkers have shifted their focus to how to manage the processes that create and discover information."

Xcelsius Adds Interactive Visualization To MS SharePoint

2005-07-09T22:32:00.000-05:00

New software from Infommersion makes it possible for IT professionals to represent new and existing information as graphical Web parts, and to see just exactly how that information will impact the rest of their businsees. Infommersion debuted its Xcelsius for SharePoint at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference today in Minneapolis. Although the software will not be available until the Fall, conference attendees were introduced to the new product, which lets companies provide their SharePoint end-users with interactive charts, graphs and dashboards. Those features were not previously possible through the SharePoint Portal Server.

This is a welcome addition for SharePoint, which is making long strides these days. This is similar to what Plumtree has been providing with Excel Web Service. But, if it comes out the way it has been described in the marketing materials then it would shut out the Excel Web Service of Plumtree.

We will have to wait to see it in action. Xcelsius for SharePoint is scheduled for release in September 2005.

Plumtree to Make Linux Shift

2005-06-17T22:15:00.000-05:00

Plumtree Software Inc. is preparing to release its first vertical applications for the retail and pharmaceutical industries while porting its portal, content management and application development platform to Linux.

The retail vertical application will be a part of the company's G6 release, which will also make all the company's applications available on the SuSE Linux platform.

Looks like Plumtree is taking its claim of supporting any and all platforms very seriously. After 5.0J this is another one which will interest a lot of government folks who are building applications based on Linux. With a stiff competition from Microsoft and IBM with an ever closing feature gap Plumtree has to come up with these to stay ahead in the race.

Plumtree Unveils 2005 State of the Portal Market Report

2005-06-13T22:12:00.000-05:00

Plumtree today unveiled a new report, "The Corporate Portal Market in 2005: Portals, Composite Applications and Integrated Activity Management," reveals that CIOs at large enterprises rank portal projects among their highest spending priorities for 2005. It offers insightful analysis into five key areas: the evolution of the corporate portal market, market segmentation, portal usage and functions, deployment costs and return on investment. This original study is available for download at http://www.plumtree.com/05/PortalMarket/

Other interesting findings in the Plumtree report include:

* Personalization features are declining in importance
* Collaboration is critical and becoming common place
* Applications are on the rise and the use of portal software for Integrated Activity Management applications is the most important and fastest growing trend among Plumtree customers
* Portals are here to stay -- 97 percent of Plumtree customers said their company's preference is to build new Web-based applications within the portal

This report is in line with what other reports from Forrester and Gartner have suggested. Indications are that new version of Plumtree Portal is in line with these recommendations and expectations. Plumtree hopes to generate a lot of traction with its new version. So do I.

What to Look for in Web Content Management

2005-06-09T22:11:00.000-05:00

How do you pick the right Web content management (WCM) system? First, recognize the different demands of internal- and customer-facing sites, and when it's the latter, look for integrated content delivery so you can track content usage and segment site visitors. These are among the findings of two recent reports on WCM by Forrester Research.

Kyle McNabb, one of the authors of these reports, says "Historically, content management solutions simply published or deployed managed content to a separate, unmanaged application such as a portal server or J2EE application. That meant delivery was left to IT developers to figure out and manage. But many organizations now say this model is a bit flawed."

Forrester's core advice, then, is to choose a system based on your core need, be it internal- or external-facing. Forrester's "Wave" report for the first quarter 2005 ranked WCM vendors Tridion, FatWire and Vignette among the leaders for external Web sites, while EMC/Documentum was among the leaders for internal sites. Only two vendors, Interwoven and Stellent, were ranked as leaders in both categories.

Plumtree Software Positioned in Leaders Quadrant in 2005 Horizontal Portal Products Magic Quadrant

2005-05-25T21:50:00.000-05:00

Evaluation Based on Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute Gartner positioned Plumtree Software in the leaders quadrant in the '2005 Horizontal Portal Products Magic Quadrant'. According to Gartner 'Leaders' are vendors who are performing well today, have a clear vision of market direction, and are actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market.

The Gartner report also indicated that enterprise portals rank in the top 10 of CIO's technology focus areas in 2005, while horizontal portal products continue to be the engine that drives enterprise portals.

The Horizontal Portal Product Magic Quadrant consists of 19 vendors who own software to build and deploy horizontal enterprise portals. Broken down into leaders, visionaries, challengers and niche players, the Horizontal Portal Product category only includes companies with the ability to build portals facing different types of audiences and a minimum of $5M in annual portal-related product and services revenues.

Orkut Invites

2005-05-25T21:49:00.000-05:00

Anybody looking for an Orkut invite, please leave a comment. I would be happy to send one to you.

Kapow and Plumtree Partner to Deliver Rich Portal Applications

2005-05-21T21:47:00.000-05:00

Kapow
Originally uploaded by sachinsinha.

Kapow Technologies announced a technology partnership with Plumtree Software that will help enable customers to expedite the population of the Plumtree Enterprise Web Suite through a code free "point-and-clip" portlet creation solution and automated migration of legacy content.

Kapow's RoboSuite is claimed to be capable of transferring every web-based application or system into a portlet in your portal and without loss of functionality or stability, as all systems remain on their original platform.

It will be interesting to see this integration in action. I know a number of clients who always wanted this, especially those mid market ones. For smaller portals with a tiny team this might become the only tool that they wuld ever need.

Plumtree and Fuego to Deliver Business Process Management

2005-05-19T21:45:00.000-05:00

Fuego Architecture
Originally uploaded by sachinsinha.

Fuego and Plumtree Software, today announced that Plumtree will be an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of Fuego's award-winning software suite, FuegoBPM.

Under this agreement, Plumtree will OEM FuegoBPM's graphical process designer and process execution engine as the foundation of a new process management product that is planned for release later in 2005. The Plumtree Process Server is designed to manage, automate and optimize business processes across work groups, IT systems and applications, resulting in increased business value in a SOA environment.

Plumtree has got this right. When Portals came they were all about content. Then came applications and portals were meant for showcasing and integrating different applications. Now every indication out there suggests that next five years would belong to process portals. Portals that expose or automate core business processes. I am really happy that Plumtree is right there at the top of it.

Oldest Knowledge About Knowledge

2005-05-14T21:43:00.000-05:00

Esther Dyson's Release 1.0 has a very nice piece on taxonomies and tags. In this section, Taxonomies and Tags, he talks about how we have been keeping the knowledge imprisoned by classifying the hardly into one and only one category. I agree with his idea of soft categorization where information can be classified into multiple categories. He writes;

Now autumn has come to the forest of knowledge, thanks to the digital revolution. The leaves are falling and the trees are looking bare. We are discovering that traditional knowledge hierarchies that have served us so well are unnecessarily restricted when it comes to organizing information in the digital world. The principles of organization themselves are changing now that they are being freed from the constraints of the physical world. For example:

- In the physical world, a fruit can hang from only one branch. In the digital world, objects can easily be classified in dozens or even hundreds of different categories.
- In the real world, multiple people use any one tree. In the digital world, there can be a different tree for each person.
- In the real world, the person who owns the information generally also owns and controls the tree that organizes that information. In the digital world, users can control the organization of information owned by others. (Exception to the rule: Westlaw owns the standard organization of case law even though the case law itself is in the public domain.)

These differences are so substantial that we can think of intellectual order as entering a third age. In the first, we organized the things themselves: We put books on shelves and silverware into drawers. In the second, we physically separated the metadata from the data: We built card catalogs and drew diagrams. In the third, the data and the metadata are digital, untying organization from the strictures of the physical world. In response, we are rapidly inventing new principles and tools of organization. When it comes to innovation on the Internet, metadata is becoming the new content.

Open Source Extends To Portals

2005-05-13T21:42:00.000-05:00

Until some time back, people did not use to put words like Open Source and Portal together. With the push of open source products in the market, Open Source Portal could be a reality sooner than later. There are quite a few in the open source market that may interest Companies or departments with a small employee base. Internet Week talks about a product Metadot in their article "Open Source Extends To Portals".

This article is posted in Knowledge Management category

Building a PHP-Based Content Management System

2005-05-11T21:40:00.000-05:00

Writing your own CMS can sometimes lead to a solution that is better suited to your requirements, better addresses the needs of your users, and is better understood by your development team. If you have the time and expertise to write your own in-house system, it can sometimes prove a better option.

Peter Zeidman has written a six part series on Building a PHP-Based Content Management System

Cynthia Says Portal

2005-05-11T20:13:00.000-05:00

Cynthia Says Portal is a web content accessibility validation solution, it is designed to identify errors in design related to Section 508 standards and the WCAG guidelines. Even though it lets you do only one file at a time, still its a good tool to have.

Seven Criteria for Evaluating Open-Source Content Management Systems

2005-05-11T20:12:00.001-05:00

Open Source Content Management Systems are on the rise these days. If you scan the web you will find hundreds of open source CMSes, right from Moodle to Druple. Linux Journal has published a list of Seven Criteria for Evaluating Open-Source Content Management Systems:

1. Web application platform
2. Software license
3. Stability and development activity
4. User community
5. Documentation and source code
6. Web standards, accessibility
7. Suitability and usability

In Abhijeet Chavan's own words "It used to be that you needed to search high and low for an open-source application that would suit your needs. Nowadays, it still takes time to find the right application, but that's because you need to sort through so many bad or inappropriate ones before finding the one that is right for you."

BPM World Expanding

2005-05-11T20:12:00.000-05:00

Dennis Callaghan - eWEEK, writes BPM World Expanding

According to him enterprise application software developers are painting a future that will consist mostly of business process management components rather than the packaged applications of today.

He also says "such a world would allow enterprises more flexibility in customizing and integrating applications, particularly in adding collaboration and workflow capabilities to those applications".

A recent study by Forrester Research Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., found nearly 90 percent of business users surveyed rated their enterprise applications poor on managing processes across functions and adapting to users' business processes. Also, more than 70 percent of IT administrators rated their applications as unable to support business change.

This is in line with what was found in the recent portal study, where Forrester predicted that all the future Enterprise portals would be process portals rather than content or application portal.

Integrating a Legacy Web Application in SharePoint

2005-05-10T20:10:00.000-05:00

Paul Schaeflein is running a regular piece on SharePoint. This week he talks about Integrating a Legacy Web Application in SharePoint

In this article he shows how to go about integrating common web applications like, the Web pages used to add/remove records from the database into the SharePoint portal.

Knowledge Management Excellence: Trends in Internal Best Practices Sharing

2005-05-10T20:09:00.000-05:00

Knowledge Management of Internal Best Practices, a benchmarking report by Best Practices, LLC, focuses on developing systems for effective knowledge transfer and intellectual asset management. This report benchmarks cross-industry knowledge management practices of the world's leading companies. Also included, are corporate profiles of leading knowledge management companies such as AstraZeneca, British Petroleum, Roche and Xerox.

For example, the following insights emerged from this research:
- A leading banking company experienced first year cost savings of more
than $3 million through on-going best practices identification and
alignment with key strategic indicators such as the efficiency ratio.
- To promote best practices performance and deployment, one leading
insurance company has developed a creative program by which employees
are eligible to win Best Practice Awards for $1,000 each. Employees
nominate themselves or are nominated by others by documenting in
writing a one-page description of a best practice that resulted in a
high level of customer satisfaction.
- One financial services company codified the expertise of its best
account managers using a software program. As a result, over a period
of 4 years, the percentage of leaving clients dropped by more than
half.
Additional topics covered include:
- Link Best Practices to Strategy Fulfillment
- Best Practice Identification Systems
- Best Practice Recognition Systems
- Best Practices Communication
- Best Practices Knowledge Sharing System
- Ongoing Nurturing of Best Practices
- Seven Models of Intellectual Asset Measurement
- Corporate Profiles of Leading Knowledge Management Companies

Case for Share Point

2005-05-03T20:05:00.000-05:00

Amidst many news of a much improved version of the Share Point Portal Server 2003, comes this article from Colin White. He writes in The Enterprise Portal: A Growing, but Confusing, Marketplace that "Support in application platform products from vendors such as BEA, IBM, Oracle, Sun, etc., for portal technology in addition to business process management (BPM) and application integration has led to many of them being used for building these process-centric portals."

He further adds "dominance of Microsoft Office and Outlook, coupled with the increasing use of Windows SharePoint Services, will force organizations to use the Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server for managing this environment."

Everybody knows that until now Microsoft has not really started thinking of penetrating the enterprise portal market. This might be the time they are starting to turn the clock. With infrastructure and clientele on their side they can really break this market apart. According to some research, Share Point Portal Server is now the first choice in portal implementations.

No doubt I would be watching this growing trend. And at the same time would be looking at the new version that Microsoft has offered for Sharepoint.

JKM Paper is Further Reading for Australian Institute of Management

2005-04-27T20:03:00.000-05:00

As a pleasant surprize it came to my notice that my JKM (Journal of Knowledge Management) paper "Software Systems Support for Knowledge Management" is recommended by Australian Institute of Management for further reading on Enterprise Content Management. Almost instantly I send a SOS to Mikael Lindvall. He said he has new ideas on where we can take this research further. Looking forward to meeting my ex bosses next week.

Why Organizations Switch Portal Vendors?

2005-04-08T19:58:00.000-05:00

"If a portal is good, more portals must be better." That seems to be how many Global 2000 information technology organizations (ITOs) are reacting to the possibilities presented by portal architectures. Instead of being the means through which IT designers integrate disparate applications, many portal projects devolve into one more thing that itself must be integrated. According to a META Trend report, IT departments will face the growing issue of portal consolidation through 2005, much as they have had to wrestle with Web site, application, and server consolidation in the past. By 2004, portal consolidation will replace portal construction as a primary area of concentration.

The portal proliferation problem applies both to individual portals and the technical portal frameworks on which they are built. Organizations will often build individual portals for particular purposes, such as employee self-service, sales analysis or major suppliers. These special-purpose portals are the precursor of portal proliferation. Through 2004, few of the main portal vendors (IBM, Plumtree, SAP, Mediapps, PeopleSoft and Microsoft) will be able to handle the different requirements of business-to-employee (B2E) intranets, business-to-customer (B2C) Internet sites, and business-to-business (B2B) extranets on a best-of- breed basis. ITOs pursuing this kind of portal approach will necessarily be drawn into creating multiple portals.

Organizations increasingly use a portal framework, or a suite of capabilities from a single vendor, to build these portals. By 2005, these frameworks will be the norm, removing many of the issues caused by multiple portal infrastructures. Governance and budget control issues encourage portal framework proliferation, as different organizational groups (re)make portal decisions independently. Although portal frameworks are generally well-suited to integrate an organization's portals, the budget holders for public Web sites are rarely interested in the requirements for internal employee sites, once again leading to different infrastructures and multiple redundant implementations. Organizational drivers are a larger source of portal proliferation than technical or functionality issues. However, too many organizations use several products even within the specific B2E, B2B, and B2C categories, because business units and divisions make rogue portal decisions independently of central IT departments and architectural coordination groups. Mergers, acquisitions, and reorganizations magnify this effect. Despite the operational and cost savings of rationalization efforts, organizations will often defy logic and defend their previous choices against consolidation.

No easy solutions for portal proliferation exist. Most enterprises attempt consolidation by building higher-level portals to replace existing portals without tackling the underlying issues. Usually, this tactic yields yet another portal that needs to be integrated, rather than the single consolidated portal users want. Personalization, security, and roles are the hardest issues to solve when consolidating portals. Few effective standards exist to share personalization and user role definitions between different portals, beyond the most basic types of information. This shortcoming poses a significant barrier to portal consolidation, because end users are unlikely to switch to a different framework after they have personalized their existing portal and defined roles to suit their individual needs. Most portals link security tightly with personalization and roles. Although effective, these links also form a barrier to consolidation.

Portal vendors and service providers are just beginning to address the issues of portal consolidation, with a few beginning to develop product offerings. The increasing presence of integration tools in portal frameworks (e.g., NEON in Sybase's portal, CrossWorlds in IBM's WebSphere) shows that some vendors are beginning to address these issues. The nascent Web services portlet standard proposals from IBM, BEA, Plumtree, Epicentric, and others begin to address the issue. Content and document vendors such as Tridion, FileNET, Interwoven, and Documentum make it a point to support multiple portals (thereby reducing the need for multiple portals), rather than trying to sell their own portal, as BroadVision, Vignette, Hyperwave, and Gauss do.

Enterprise portals can provide significant benefits to organizations that implement them well. However, IT planners must remember why portals originally rose to prominence. Users had become confused by the myriad sources of content and application functionality available to them. Providing or tolerating too many portals will take that confusion to a new level, rather than alleviate it. As enterprise portals become a more important part of application frameworks, many more organizations will have to face the issue of portal consolidation - a natural consequence of portal proliferation.

Say Goodbye To Portal Servers

2005-04-07T19:57:00.000-05:00

One of my client broke news that they are abandoning Plumtree and would be going with Websphere. Sad as it is I became disturbed and started wondering, "Why Organizations Switch Portal Vendors?". Immediately this research work from Forrester came to my attention, "Say Goodbye To Portal Servers"

I still have to get a hold of this paper, so, I can not comment how strong this case has been made by Nate Root. Though he tries to say it all in the Executive Summary. In his own words;

"Vendors like Plumtree Software and Epicentric created the portal server market in the late 1990s by offering servers with technical features that just didn't exist within firms' existing IT infrastructure. Now those features — like UI abstraction, integration, workflow, and delegated administration — have been co-opted, improved, and embedded in general-purpose infrastructure platforms from vendors like IBM, BEA Systems, Oracle, and Microsoft. The standalone portal server market is gone, absorbed into infrastructure vendors' app server platforms and emerging interaction platforms."

Yahoo 360

2005-03-29T11:36:00.000-05:00

Today I started testing Yahoo! 360 thanks to Kent and have 50 invitations to share. Just drop me a note if you need an invite. I'll be happy to share.

Software Tools for Knowledge Management

2005-03-25T20:55:00.000-05:00

KM should be supported by a collection of technologies for authoring, indexing, classifying, storing, contextualizing and retrieving information, as well as for collaboration and application of knowledge. A friendly front-end and a robust back-end are the basic necessities of a software tool for knowledge management. Figure below shows my knowledge management system architecture.

The lowest layer handles sources of explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge resides in repositories as documents or other types of knowledge items (e.g., e-mail messages, and database records). Standard authoring tools (such as word processors) and database man-agement systems (DBMS) support this layer. File servers, e-mail tools and Internet and intranet services support the infrastructure layer; document and content management sys-tems handle knowledge repositories. Knowledge must be organized according to the con-text of each organization, based on a corporate taxonomy that creates a “knowledge map”, supported by classifying and indexing tools. Tools also support, at the next level, data and knowledge discovery and collaboration services. Through portals, knowledge can be distributed as needed by different users and applications, such as e-learning, competence management, intellectual property management, and customer relationship management.

It is difficult to draw a line between what is called information technology (IT) and tools for KM. In the above architecture model I consider KM to be the higher layers, starting at the “knowledge repository” level with IT constituting the lower layers, but this boundary is fuzzy. I concentrate on the upper layers of the architecture and view systems from a knowledge management perspective. I will discuss the needs of employees that use knowledge, the types of knowledge conversion that occur and a common set of features provided by systems from each category. The systems I selected to analyze are those that are widely used for supporting the KM layers of the above architecture. This survey is not intended to cover all systems on the market but rather to give the reader a sense of the various systems that are available for knowledge management.

SQL Server 2000: How to License SQL Server

2005-03-24T20:54:00.000-05:00

Many a times my clients have asked this question about licensing SQL Server. They get confused between Per Seat and Per Server option. Now here is a nice article on SQL Server Licensing, straight from Microsoft SQL Server 2000: How to License SQL Server. It says that "The Per Seat CAL model is likely the most cost effective choice in environments inside the firewall where client-to-server ratios are low".

When installing SQL Server for use with Plumtree Architecture, suggestion is to use Per Seat configuration. Also for Plumtree purposes we always need a mixed mode install of the SQL Server.

Yahoo To Give Webmail Users 1 Gig of Space

2005-03-23T12:03:00.000-05:00

Yahoo announced that they will start to increase all webmail accounts to 1 Gig of space starting on April 1st. It will take about two weeks to finish the upgrade, but start watching your account next week. This will match the Gmail size of the email accounts and since it sounds like Gmail will be leaving beta and open to the public in April too, Yahoo thought it would get a jump on things.

The KM Cluster

2005-03-21T20:53:00.000-05:00

Colabria writes about the KM Cluster. "The KM Cluster is elegant simplicity. The goal is mastery. The outcome is a harmonious whole." Its good to see that people are getting out of the one system KM solution mould. My paper "Software Systems Support for Knowledge Management" talked about a similar conglomeration of different systems to achieve successful knowledge management objectives in the organizations. Good to see that people have started to realize this and this will help in undoing the harm done to KM in 90s by terming every system that came out as the knowledge managemnet solution.

Reasons Why People Would Not Share Knowledge

2005-03-18T20:51:00.000-05:00

A company’s culture reflects what people think and feel about the organization. Do they trust each other and their management, and are they willing to go out of the traditional bounds of the work culture to benefit the organization?

Software organizations need to realize that employees may feel possessive about their knowledge, and they may not be forthcoming in sharing it. After all, the knowledge they have is why they are valuable to the organization, why they are paid by the organization, and why they do not want to give that knowledge away. A term which is used these days is “capturing tacit knowledge”, which is similar to “picking your employees' brains.” This term sounds like software organizations are picking whatever their employees know. The “capturing emotion” might scare people into withholding their knowledge, thinking they will be expendable as soon as their employers have captured all of the knowledge they need. If this was the result of successful knowledge management, then everybody should be afraid of losing their job.

Here are several reasons why employees might be reluctant to share their knowledge:

1. Employees want the organization to be dependent on them. If they share the knowledge with others, they fear they will loose their “expert” status.

2. Some cultures encourage individualism and ban cooperative work and sharing. In such cultures it is harder to establish a successful knowledge management program. As a matter of fact, most Western schools do not encourage students to work together in the classroom or while doing homework, so most students have learned that sharing is cheating. In order to create a sharing culture, such values and manners have to be unlearned.

3. Employees might not be willing to share lessons learned because of their negative connotation. Lessons learned are based on incidents, some of which might be failures. Although the purpose is to learn from failures to avoid similar mistakes, many employees might fear that submitting negative lessons learned could be interpreted against them by management.

These are cultural issues that management must handle by creating a learning environment. Employees will, however, always be concerned with how management treats them, and the information that management has about them. Employees will react negatively if they fear that information will be used against them.

Opportunities for Knowledge Management in Software Engineering

2005-03-15T20:49:00.000-05:00

There are several reasons to believe that knowledge management for software engineering would be easier to implement than in other organizations. To start with, it is clear that a knowledge management system needs to be supported by appropriate IT technology. While IT technology can be intimidating to many people, this is not the case for software engineers. Instead, they are already accustomed to, and probably willing to try, new software tools, as long as they believe the tools will help them do a better job.

The other obvious benefit with software engineering activities is the fact that all artifacts are already in electronic form and, thus, can easily be distributed and shared. This is not the case in many other design-oriented industries in which the product takes some physical form. An example is interior auto design, which has so many similarities with software design that it can even use the same approaches for managing experience, but which also is different in that the end product is a physical artifact that cannot easily be sent across the world in a second.

The most encouraging fact is probably that knowledge sharing between software engineers already does occur to a large degree. A great example of peer-to-peer knowledge sharing is Google, formerly Deja's Usenet Archive, where software engineers and others share knowledge without any form of compensation. This is encouraging because it shows that software engineers are willing to share their knowledge. Another highly appreciated knowledge sharing forum is Sun’s support for Java programmers , which not only provides discussion forums and knowledge bases on Java technologies, but also offers technology chats with Java experts. These chats are even captured so that the knowledge they encompass does not get lost.

Challenges for Knowledge Management in Software Engineering

2005-03-14T20:46:00.000-05:00

Implementing knowledge management in any organization is a challenge because of the time and effort that is required before it starts to return on the investment. Software organizations seem to have even less time than others because of the fast pace of the business. The lack of time is a direct threat against knowledge management. People often have no time to even search for knowledge. This cultural behavior has the effect that a long-term investment such as knowledge management and learning for the next project are not prioritized. Instead, project managers are interested in finishing the current project on time. As long as management does not allow the culture to change and does not allow employees to invest in managing their knowledge, knowledge management is likely not to happen.

Another challenge is the elusiveness of software. Unlike products of other domains, software is not visible (compare with buildings in the civil engineering domain). Invisibility leads to less reuse of the system. A developer, while implementing or modifying a system, cannot find out if the work has already been done. Many times, developers reinvent a system instead of reusing it, and this results in lower productivity. Another result is that software developers are not accustomed to reuse, which is a problem because the idea behind knowledge management is reuse of assets.

The most problematic challenge to knowledge management is that most of the knowledge in software engineering is tacit and will never become explicit. It will remain tacit because there is no time to make it explicit. There are very few approaches and tools for turning tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, and most of the tacit knowledge is tacit in the most extreme way. Therefore, it is difficult to express and make explicit. A way to address this problem can be to develop a knowledge sharing culture, as well as technology support for knowledge management, never forgetting that the main asset of the organization is its employees.

Styles of Plumtree Drop Down Menu

2005-03-11T20:45:00.000-05:00

Ever wondered why the Plumtree Drop Down Menus show you default colors irrespective of theme color you choose in the header portlets. The secret is that appearance of drop down menus are controlled by a different stylesheet, called PTPMMenu.css. To change the appearance of the menus, open this file in any editor, make the changes, save the file and restart your application server. Whatever people say but I can assure you that you won't get the desired result unless you restart your application server. Also, this file can be found at PT_HOME\ ptimages\ imageserver\ plumtree\ common\ private\ js\ jsportalmenus\ SomeNumber\ styles\ css

Plumtree Content Server 6.0 Allows Community Customization on Published Content Portlets

2005-03-10T20:44:00.000-05:00

This is going to be a big relief for a lot of clients. Until 5.0, Plumtree Content Server did not allow community customization on Published Content Portlets. This meant that people had to create a new portlet for every new community or else it would keep showing the same content.

This is going to change with Plumtree Content Server 6.0. It allows community customization on all the published content portlets. To make this work, open the portlet in portlet editor wizard and click on the EDIT button. After that go to the Advanced Settings area and scroll down to the bottom. Under Customization Rights you can enable or disable community customization for this particular portlet. Snap! Relieves a big headache and keeps the portlets to a minimum.

Top Seven Portals - Plumtree on the top

2005-03-09T20:42:00.000-05:00

InfoWorld has done some good work in rating the top seven portals. They have also listed all the criteria these portals were evaluated on, as well as, how each of portals fared on those. Take a look at their results How the portals scored.

Undoubtedly Plumtree came on the top again. Here is what InfoWorld has to say about Plumtree Enterprise Web. "Plumtree Enterprise Web Suite’s Portal 5.0, Collaboration, Content and Studio servers work together seamlessly, giving users a fine portal experience. What’s more, Plumtree provides centralized security and administration of Web applications on different systems -- both within and outside the enterprise -- in one portal environment. This outstanding approach to Web application deployment yields simple operation for users along with lower development and maintenance costs for an organization."

The Need for Distance Collaboration

2005-03-07T20:42:00.000-05:00

Any larger software development is a group activity. The division of work into phases often means that different groups are involved at the same or different time. Due to globalization, these groups are often spread out geographically and it is common that group members live and work in different time zones. Outsourcing of subsystems to subcontractors also results in geographically co-located teams that need to work together. These groups need to communicate, collaborate, and coordinate independently of time and place.

Knowledge Management can help solve this problem as it acknowledges the need to capture, organize and store knowledge, as well as the necessity of knowledge transfer. Communication in software engineering is often related to the transfer of knowledge. Collaboration is related to mutual sharing of knowledge. Coordination that is independent of time and space is facilitated if the work artifacts and their status are stored and made part of an organizational memory.

The Need for Domain Knowledge

2005-03-05T20:40:00.000-05:00

Software development not only requires knowledge about its own domain, but also about the domain for which software is being developed. Sometimes a new domain requires learning a specific technique or a new programming language or application of a new kind of project management technique. Therefore, acquiring the experience and skills needed in projects takes a long time. Even when the organization has been working on a particular domain extensively, the deep application-specific knowledge required to successfully build complex software is thinly spread over many software development engineers. Although individual development engineers understand different components of the application domain, building large and complex software like the Space Shuttle software for NASA requires integration of different pieces of domain knowledge. Most of the system engineers working in these complex domain software development units say, “writing code is not the problem, understanding the problem is the problem”.

There is no shortcut to learning. Domain knowledge that no one in the organization possesses must be acquired either by training or by hiring knowledgeable employees. Knowledge Management can, however, help organize the acquisition of new knowledge and it can help identify expertise as well as capture, package and share knowledge that already exists in the organization.

The Need for Acquiring Knowledge About New Technologies

2005-03-04T20:39:00.000-05:00

Software development is becoming a more complex domain to master due to the constant change and stream of new technologies. The result is that it “is very difficult to keep the organization ahead in the competition”. Many industries have similar problems, but the software industry is probably worse than other industries due to the fact that the pace of change is faster.

The emergence of new technologies makes software more powerful, but at the same time “new technologies is every project manager’s worst nightmare”. Every emerging technology cannot be mastered overnight and it is extremely hard to accurately estimate the cost of a project when the technologies it will be using are new and unproven, and may even change during the project.

Lack of time causes a lack of experience, constantly pushing the boundaries of an organization’s development set of skills and competencies. When developers or project managers use a technology that is new to all team members of a given project, the engineers all too often resort to the "learning by doing" approach. This often results in serious delays of projects.

Knowledge Management fosters a knowledge sharing culture within the company that helps facilitate sharing of knowledge related to new technologies. Knowledge Management also makes the point that time should be spent on actively searching for knowledge both within the organization and outside. Knowledge sharing occurs within communities of practice and interests, which can help speed up the learning curve.

The Need for Capturing and Sharing Process and Product Knowledge

2005-03-03T20:36:00.000-05:00

Each software product and process is different in terms of goals and contexts. A single software development approach cannot be assumed for all projects or products. To develop software for the space shuttle is not the same as to develop software for a dishwasher. Software developers are often exposed to this diversity, which makes the software discipline inherently experimental and we constantly gain experience with each development project. “Knowledge emerges in work practices, often being defined by the first project to address the issues involved”.

Ideally, we would apply that experience to future projects in order to avoid mistakes and leverage successes. This does not always happen because often these work practices are not captured. Development teams work on similar kinds of projects without realizing that results would have been achieved more easily if they followed a practice adopted by a previous project. The bottom line is that development teams do not benefit from existing experience. Instead they repeat mistakes over and over again. This was manifested by the fact that “a large number of cases showed a lack of knowledge in the specific project, while this knowledge was actually available in the company”. These problems are also tied to the problem of transferring knowledge to novices in the organization.

Knowledge Management addresses the issues of capturing and sharing knowledge, while the problems of project diversity and product singularity make it clear that such a system must be flexible enough to encompass variations on the same theme. Most artifacts guiding a software project and developed during a software project can be represented as documents. Therefore, these are the main explicit assets of the software organization. These assets directly support the core business and must be managed so that they do not get lost. The problem of transferring knowledge from experts to novices is facilitated if the knowledge is readily captured, stored, and organized, possibly as documents. Therefore, Document Management is the main corner stone of our knowledge management model.

Motivation for Knowledge Management in Software Engineering

2005-03-02T20:34:00.000-05:00

Software engineering is a complex business that involves many people working in different phases and activities. Constant technology changes make the work dynamic: New problems are solved and new knowledge is created every day. The knowledge in software engineering is diverse and its proportions immense and growing. Organizations have problems keeping track of what this knowledge is, where it is, and who has it. A structured way of managing the knowledge and treating the knowledge and its owners as valuable assets could help organizations leverage the knowledge they possess. This section discusses software organizations’ needs related to knowledge management. We also discuss some of the challenges that software organizations might face when they try to implement knowledge management, as well as some opportunities that might make implementation easier.

Happy Birthday Yahoo!

2005-03-02T13:20:00.000-05:00

Yahoo! The company that redifenied the whole web is celebrating its 10th birthday today. Yahoo! holds a special place in almost all of our lives. Everybody who has ever been on the web must have been on the yahoo.com at least once. Probably not many people would remember how Yahoo used to look like when it came into this world 10 years ago. Take a look at Yahoo! home page from 10 years ago . I like Yahoo! and its an inseparable part of my day to day life. I just want to extend my heartfelt wishes on its 10th anniversary. I also wish many more of these decade anniversaries. Long Live yahoo!

Goa, Jharkhand and ... Bihar next?

2005-03-02T09:12:00.000-05:00

Is this what democracy means to Congress. Is this what Governance means for Sonia and her coterie. Rediff anticipates this already and writes "Buta may do a Jharkhand in Bihar". NDA leaders went to the president as an outcry for this whole farce, but, President, what he can do? I don't think he will be able to reverse the decision in Jharkhand. If this happens in Bihar as well that will be a slap in the face of democracy. If for a moment I disassociate myself from NDA and think rationally then also I find it terribly wrong.

What Congress and Sonia are upto? Are they on a mission to remove any and all pieces of non Congress governments from the map of INDIA? Well if they really want to do that then focus on development and try to get eleccted during the elections rather than making backdoor entries through, now sullied, RajBhavans.

Knowledge Management in Software Engineering

2005-03-01T20:33:00.000-05:00

The first argument in favor of managing knowledge in software engineering is that it is a human and knowledge intensive activity. Similar to other sectors, such as consulting, law, investment banking, and advertising, the main asset of an organization consists of its intellectual capital. Software development is a “design type process” where every person involved has to make a large number of decisions, each of them with several possible choices, as opposed to a “production”, or “manufacturing” process where, once a decision is made, many workers can carry out tasks without having to make further decisions. For example, a company must select what products to develop; a project manager must select the staff and must plan a project, which implies selecting a process and a set of methods and techniques to be used; a designer must select an efficient algorithm; a programmer has to decide on a function, or variables to use; and a tester must select a set of test cases. How do all these people make their decisions? On what are they based? Most of the time, decision makers rely on personal knowledge and experience, on their “gut feeling”. But as software development projects grow larger and the discipline moves from craftsmanship to engineering, it becomes a group activity where individuals need to communicate and coordinate. Individual knowledge has to be shared and leveraged at a project and organization level, and this is exactly what KM proposes. Knowledge management demystifies the individual hero and shifts the focus to collective creativity, exploiting the emerging behavioral idea – “none of us is as smart as all of us”. This complements software industry initiatives like the Capability Maturity Model, which tries to establish stable software processes that are independent of individual software engineers. Knowledge has to be collected, organized, stored, and easily retrieved when it needs to be applied.

Yuvraj preferred to Kaif for Test squad

2005-02-28T04:00:00.000-05:00

Cricinfo Staff writes "In a minor surprise, Yuvraj Singh was included ahead of Mohammad Kaif in the 14-member Indian squad for the first Test against Pakistan". I think whatever our esteemed selectors do should never come as a surprize. It's ridiculous and laughable the way selectors, time and again, pick players based on theories that they devise and rest aside the performances that have been put by the players. Mohinder was right then and he is right today in saying "The national selectors are a bunch of jokers!". He perfectly mirrored the immense frustration of millions of fans of Indian cricket - fans who were tired of the politics of selection, the procession of players picked and dropped for reasons patently non-cricketing.

Knowledge Technologies - Knowlogies

2005-02-28T03:27:00.000-05:00

Knowledge Management is an emerging discipline that promises to capitalize on organizations’ intellectual capital. The concept of knowledge is far from new and phrases containing the word knowledge such as “knowledge bases” and “knowledge engineering” have been around for a while. The artificial intelligence (AI) community has, for example, long dealt with representation, storage, and application of knowledge. The concept of Knowledge Management (KM) emerged in the mid-1980’s from the need to derive knowledge from the “deluge of information”. In the 1990’s KM was translated into commercial computer technology, facilitated by new technologies such as Internet, group support systems, search engines, portals, and data and knowledge warehouses as well as the application of statistical analysis and AI techniques. According to various research “80 percent of the largest global corporations now have KM projects”. “Over 40 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies now have a Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO), a senior-level executive responsible for creating an infrastructure and cultural environment for knowledge sharing”.

Like any other buzzword, the term “Knowledge Management” is sometimes over-used and misused. A senior analyst at the marketing research firm Ovum says: “I think vendors did KM a great disservice by labeling every tool that came out as KM. People got disillusioned with it”.

So, is knowledge management one of those hyped concepts that rise quickly, ambitiously claims to cure organizational headaches and then fails and falls quietly? Or is it an instrument that will really help organizations address some of the problems they face while trying to achieve their business objectives? In particular, is knowledge management valuable to knowledge intensive organizations? What kind of problems can KM help address and solve? What kind of solutions does KM propose to these problems? How can a KM system for a knowledge intensive organization be implemented? What are the challenges? What are the success factors?

KNOWLOGIES will focus on all these issues. Keep a tab on this blog. I also welcome participation from all the readers out there. In the real language of Knowledge Management, I am asking all the readers to explicitize their tacit knowledge.

Nov. 5, 11:30am-12:30pm	Introduction to Business Taxonomies Click here to register.
Nov. 8, 11:30am-12:30pm	Taxonomy Workshops Click here to register.
Nov. 10, 11:30am-12:30pm	Practical Taxonomy Design Click here to register.
Nov. 12, 11:30am-12:30pm	Taxonomy Governance and Maintenance Click here to register.