I was just catching up on my RSS feeds when I ran across Dana Gardner's latest post, "WOA may soon eclipse SOA as most impactful business transformation agent" which evoked an odd sense of anxiety and the need to immediately jot down some of my SOA thoughts.  In short, Service-Oriented Architecture is a software design principle which attempts to break apart monolithic applications into loosely coupled systems, usually based around business processes.  SOA has been up in our grills for a few years now, and as Gardner suggests the adoption is relatively low for the hype.  I've not checked, but I imagine SOA is in the "trough of disillusionment" on Gartner's hype cycle.  I believe I have some insight into the slow or non-adoption of SOA in the enterprise.

Read more...

This is my favorite time of year.  The new year rush and subsequent lull is gone, the taxes are filed (and refund on the way), and baseball is back!  It's been a long and dark offseason for Major League Baseball (see the Mitchell Report), but the 2008 season is finally here.  The MLB season kicks off tomorrow night in D.C. as my Atlanta Braves hope to spoil the Washington National's home opener in their new ballpark aptly named, Nationals Park.

As I did last year, I'm going to attempt to predict the fortunes (or misfortunes) of my 2008 Atlanta Braves.  First, let's start with the offseason transactions.

Read more...

Last week I attended Microsoft's Convergence 2008 conference at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL.  Convergence is focused on Microsoft's Business Solutions division which includes applications in the Dynamics family -- CRM, GP, AX, NAV and SL -- but also touches on related technologies such as SharePoint (WSS and MOSS) and SQL Server.  It was my first time going to this conference, but being at Tech-Ed last year, I figured it would be similar.

Read more...

For a while I've had ongoing conversations within my group of business friends about core businesses.  The conversation goes like this:  companies say they do Y but act like a company that does Z.  It's a discrepancy in perception (or public relations) and actuality (which usually isn't so public).  I was reminded of this topic this morning when I read a message from Hugh MacLeod, who said that Wal-Mart is a tech company.  Very true.

I replied to him with my two favorite examples: Amazon.com is a tech company and Fandango.com is a research company (try it... http://fandangoresearch.com).  I have more... AAA is a research company, NASCAR is a marketing platform not a sport, etc.

Read more...

For reasons unexplained, I was on the iTunes Music Store, happened to click the American Idol section and remembered how offended I was at the performance of John Lennon's Imagine.  And I was compelled to write the following review:

He's got a good voice, but I'm sorry... there are songs that should be off limits to the contestants and John Lennon's Imagine is one of them.  I find it highly disrespectful and pretentious of a 16 year-old to try and rewrite one of the most important and cathartic melodies ever penned.  The American Idol producers need to impose a moral authority, as protectors of art, to stop this kind of nonsense.  What worries me is that we'll see a lot of this butchery this season now that the Lennon/McCartney catalog is available to the contestants.

Who's with me?