Ard van Someren

Future Of Productivity: People information

2011-06-28T09:20:00.000+02:00

People are better informed

People are better informed, but not because the quality of information has improved, but information can be found more easy and accurate. Most data is non structured, very hard to capture and easy mistaken for information. If organizations knew what they know Innovative initiatives would pop up more frequent and turn out to be successful more easily.

Classic data

Classic data driven systems capture structured data derived form predefined activities in designed processes. Organizations however do not communicate and collaborate trough this structured data, but in a way more fluid way. When we start a project we write a project initiation document, we send a email to a supplier, a design is written down and presented in a presentation during a meeting online.

Classic (My) document management

Systems designed to capture information from non structured data sets like a document management system are meant to fill the gap. And sure they do in several ways. Data in a document can be captured by index the data in an intelligent way, categorize the subjects. If the data is only a picture systems can recognize these characters as a step before indexing and categorizing.
By adding workflows the system can more fluidly build additional information about the data, a bit like the systems supporting structured processes did before. So this helps organizations in their first step towards a combined structured and non structured information approach of capturing information from data.

Besides all those nicely designed systems that supports these organizations, there are people. It has been very hard to decide what to capture and how to store all that information. When time goes by, we often discover we have more information than we can find, or should I say information is devolving to data again. Well I mean, is information still information when we can't find it and can't give it a meaning?

Data is the new platform, and social is the intelligence

Gavin Michael, global managing director for R&D of Accenture gave his vision (*) on data as the new platform and the importance of social to use it intelligent. He has consolidated the results of research into 8 trends:

Data takes its rightful place as a platform.
Analytics is driving a discontinuous evolution from business intelligence.
Cloud computing will create more value higher up the stack.
Architecture will shift from server-centric to service-centric.
IT security will respond rapidly, progressively—and in proportion.
Data privacy will adopt a risk-based approach.
Social platforms will emerge as a new source of business intelligence.
User experience is what matters.

People are key

A more important factor of knowledge in the future of productivity is being able to keep finding information, help people in organizations to find and use the information meaningful.

(**)People are not unique in their exploitation, however we can reason and understand things. And even if we don’t understand, we know that there are others that do and if the need arises, we can study their understanding and learn from them.

The abstract thought isn’t inventiveness. Man didn’t invent fire; he witnessed it through some natural occurrence. Just as he noticed a round rock was easier to roll than a square one. The abstract was in seeing how both of these could be used to advantage.

People are key, they have certain passion, experience, expertise, the abillity to see and understand the use. Systems that can capture this people profile and combine these components with the structured data and the more unstructured and workflow driven and captured information from document intensive processes, will support future productivity of organizations.

Social, people focused information can put to use, ranked, commented, recommended and found through peers, in a social network of people working together apart. Fluid organization supporting changing demands and processes.

(*) Blog Cortney Fielding - Data is the new platform and social the intelligence
(**) Blog John Souter - The people Business

Published in this Future of Productivity series:
Document Dynamics
Documents
The Cloud demands smarter devices, and cheap too!
Aan Het Werk! Aan de slag met Het Nieuwe Werken in het MKB
Office 365 walkthrough and more
Changing the game with Office 365
The Sweetspot of eReaders and Business Solutions
Small and Medium Business
Roadmap announcements BPOS

Future of Healthcare; Vision Diner - Strategische Zorgagenda. Some highlights

2011-06-27T10:42:00.001+02:00

Onlangs had ik de eer om te gast te mogen zijn tijdens een vision diner waarin als thema de strategische zorgagenda centraal stond. Georganiseerd door Flevum en plezierig gehost door de advocaten van BarentsKrans in de hofstad.

Centrale spreker op deze avond was Huybert van Eck, verbonden als voorzitter RvB aan het ADRZ.

De gezondheidszorg is in transformatie. Instellingen zullen zich moeten gaan onderscheiden op het gebied van uitstraling, doelmatigheid, kwaliteit en prijs.

Zo staat opgenomen op de site van Flevum over de Zorgagenda 2010 - 2014. Een complexere zorgmarkt waarin vergrijzing en de veranderingen in zorgbehoeften die dit met zich meebrengt, koorstsachtig op de hielen wordt gezeten door steeds sneller veranderende technologie om deze behoefte in te vullen.
Tijdens de gesprekken en de presentatie van het beeld dat Huybert van Eck voor ons schetste werd wel duidelijk dat technologie slechts een enabler is en dat de grote motor van de verandering van de zorg een heel andere richting behoeft. Het zal een enorme mindshift vragen, waarin het huidige zorgbestel waarin wij vandaag gewend zijn aan een overheid die alles voor ons regelt er in de toekomst heel anders uit ziet.
Centraal in de discussie staat toch wel de kwaliteit van de toekomstige zorg en de betaalbaarheid van deze zorg in de toekomst.

Kwaliteit en kosten van de toekomstige zorg

Kwaliteit van zorg moet naar de toekomst toe vanuit een heel andere context bekeken worden. Grote verandering in de behoefte door de toename van het aantal oudere en de hogere gemiddelde leeftijd van de ouderen leidt er toe dat ouderenzorg de curatieve zorg van de toekomst is.

Het aantal ziekenhuizen waarmee die zorg op dit moment wordt geboden is te groot (overzicht zorg atlas) en de kwaliteit van de zorg die wordt geboden niet overal gelijk. In het groot stedelijk gebied (van Eck maakt een rondje Amsterdam, Den Haag, Rotterdam, Breda, Eindhoven, Nijmegen, Arnhem, Utrecht en weer terug naar Amsterdam) is sprake van een hoge dichtheid van ziekenhuizen. In deze ziekenhuizen is sprake van een grote overlap van geboden specialistische zorg.

Steeds meer worden ziekenhuizen beoordeeld en afgerekend op het verlenen van deze diensten in verhouding tot een redelijke behoefte. Het gevolg is dat deze ziekenhuizen zich steeds verder specialiseren op het leveren van die zorg die in hun gebied het meest gevraagd wordt.

De schil Nederland, het gebied buiten het groot stedelijk gebied, kampt met krimp. Enerzijds trekken jongeren weg uit deze gebieden op zoek naar een meer aantrekkelijke omgeving, anderzijds is de toename van het aantal oudere in deze gebieden groter. De toenemende nadruk op de normen die gesteld worden aan het leveren van het zorgpakket door de ziekenhuizen in deze krimpende gebieden vraagt om een meer flexibele inrichting.

Bepaalde zorg blijven bieden in al deze ziekenhuizen is naar de toekomst toe nauwelijks te verantwoorden en kan betekenen dat clienten moeten uitwijken naar ziekenhuizen in het grootstedelijk gebied. Dit is een ontwikkeling die door een aantal ziekenhuizen in Nederland inmiddels door specialisatie en verantwoording t.a.v. de vraag uit het vestigingsgebied wordt gestuurd.
De ziekenhuizen zelf hebben daarbij te maken met het gevoel dat ze een deel van hun aanzien verliezen. Gedachte is dat ook de client het lastig vindt dat om zorg te betrekken uit een ander ziekenhuis, echter is dit een geaccepteerde beweging als het tengoede komt van de kwaliteit van de zorg die deze specialisatie met zich meebrengt.

Volgens van Eck kan Nederland (met hier en daar een herindeling) met 40 ziekenhuizen volledig de zorgbehoefte dekken, zo kan vanuit onderzoek geconcludeerd worden. Dit heeft een fundamenteel andere impact op het huidige zorgbestel en de wijzen waarop deze door de ziekenhuizen wordt geleverd. Een kleine blik op het plaatje hier boven leert dat dit aantal dan gehalveerd moet worden.
Maatschappelijk heeft dit weer een grote impact. Elk zichzelf respecterend dorp heeft een ziekenhuis, zo is de huidige gedachte. De aanwezigheid van een ziekenhuis geeft een gevoel van zekerheid en daarmee een reden of een stimulance om je als ondernemer, of inwoner te vestigen.
Een beslissing in deze richting heeft overigens grotere gevolgen voor de schil van Nederland, waar ten gevolgen van bevolkingskrimp minder specialistische en planbare zorg lokaal beschikbaar zal zijn.

Van Eck is een voorstander voor meer ondernemerschap bij de ziekenhuizen. Bemoeienissen vanuit de overheid staan dit ondernemerschap in de weg en werkt zelfs inefficient als het ziekenhuis niet op prestatie wordt afgerekend. Budgetering maakt dat de ziekenhuizen op hun winkeltje blijven passen en niet als ondernemer op ontwikkelingen in de markt acteren. De vraag is dan ook of de huidige parlementaire democratie noodzakelijke pijnlijke besluiten in de weg staat. Impopulair om te nemen voor het electoraat.

Nu heeft hierarchie absoluut een belangrijke functie als het gaat om spoedeisende hulp. Overige zorgtaken zijn echter goed planbaar en gebaat bij specialisatie en marktwerking.

Kosten van de toekomstige zorg

Kosten van de zorg gaat toenemen, maar er is ook een belangrijke verschuiving van deze kosten. Kosten die toenemen naarmate dat we ouder worden en de laatste 3 jaar (70+) het hoogst zijn. Toenemende levensverwachtingen zorgen er voor dat deze periode van de 'laatste 3 jaar' echter sterk toe zullen nemen. De zorg voor ouderen is de curatieve zorg van de toekomst.

Techniek en de toekomstige zorg

Techniek gaat een belangrijke rol spelen in de realisatie van zorg in de toekomst. Niet enkel in de hoogstandjes die chirurgen laten zien bij het uitvoeren van een operatie, maar vooral ook toenemende inzet van zorg op afstand en communicatie.
Vergroten van de doematigheid en kwaliteit door monitoren op afstand ondersteund door technologie, maar ook zeker het verbeteren van de uitstraling van de zorg. Niet langer meer naar de poli om na een lange wachttijd voor een update van de specialist weer buiten staan, maar op basis van gemeten resultaten een kort consult online.

Adjiedj Bakas geeft vanuit zijn visie op de toekomst van de gezondheid een aardige inkijk. Naast het boek heeft hij ook een filmpje gepubliceerd.

De toekomst van gezondheid - Adjiedj Bakas.

Future vision film

Flevum Vision Diner - Strategische Zorgagenda met spreker Huybert van Eck, voorzitter Raad van Bestuur Admiraal de Ruijter Ziekenhuis. 16 juni 2011. Het Admiraal de Ruiter Ziekenhuis heeft ca 2700 medewerkers met een totaal omzet van ca 160M. De discussie rondom de Strategische Zorgagenda kent een vervolg in september bij het ADRZ. Ik hoop dat ik daar ook weer bij aanwezig kan zijn.

Future of Productivity: Five questions #HOC #HOC11

2011-06-15T11:53:00.000+02:00

Thursday June 16th I will seek for the answer on five questions during the HOC (Het Outsourcings Congres). A congres focussed on outsourcing with the theme The Cloud. I will guide the discussion on the subject: Documents to The Cloud: don't forget unstructured data. Five questions will be leading.

Five questions

1. What is a Document?
Paper as a information carier has changed. The Concept Document is chaning rappidly too. Wikipedia describes the document as: a work of non-fiction writing intended to store and communicate information, thus acting as a recording. Strinking in the following is the way a document is described in classic types like a thesis, a whitepaper, a brief or an invoice. Nowhere a describtion of the claim: ...and communication information.

2. Do Documents support collaboration and interaction?
...intended to store and communicate information. I agree on the idea that a document is intended to communicate information. I have a hard time to believe that a document is meant to store information and thus degrade the information to data. Storing data or documents is not a goal. The goal is finding usefull information and get informed.

3. Can The Cloud support productivity?
Doing your job in a knowledge intensive environment demands information, which has to be processed. Only than it could become knowledge. Interpretation of information, the processing and use to complete a task. A lot of data is very structured, much more is stored in an unstructured manner. Previously, borders as time and place were important limiting factors in the accessibility of information. The Cloud supports the removal of these restrictions and has the potential to improve productivity.

4. Will The Cloud structure our non structured data?
Finding relevant information is essential when it comes to productivity. Compartmentalized bins do not contribute to obtaining an overview. The world of structured data has not been proven as a route to the paperless office, also adding document repositories brought but limited lighting. Cooperation and interaction between people ask apparently an other kind of information. More natural you see for example this support from a platform which is developed towards a social (peer) network support. It is not or - or but the added value of and structured, and unstructured ... and the man himself. The factor that YOU and I together. WE are the power of the community enabling the better finding of valuable information.

5. Does The Cloud change information?
Information needs, giving a value judgement, the form in which this information is distributed and found is changing. The Cloud, social media hypes, the power of the community finds its basis in the sharing of information and searching and setting up collaborations. Knowledge is power includes the fear of a data security model, sharing is power, however, the belief that data only gets its value when we turn it into knowledge together.

Future of Productivity: Document dynamics

2011-06-09T11:58:00.000+02:00

[wikipedia]

A document is a work of writing intended to store and communicate information, thus acting as a recording -

The term document may be applied to any discrete representation of meaning, but usually it refers to something physical like one or more printed pages, or to a "virtual" document in electronic (digital) format.

What is a document?

A document is a piece of paper!

Not that long ago we thought of a document as a piece of paper with text. If the text was very long and well structured we called it a book.

Still paper is not gone, but the way it is used is. It no longer has the purpose as a 'longterm' carrier of information, but as a mean to structure or support a discussion or a meeting. After the meeting is over, the paper has lost it's purpose and will be disposed.

The document however is still alive and kicking! Well... Depends on the way you look at a document

Dynamics of documents

A document is a living object!

I remember when my father was working in the office (we lived upstairs) and I went down there they had one IBM typewriter. It was an electronic one. It supported the assistant - Nelly was her name - to type a lot faster and even correct a piece of text when in error.
My father had no typewriter, but they had a machine to dictate a letter. So when a letter was dictated to Nelly, she had a few degrees of freedom only - when to jump to another line. That was about it. Rather static.

[wikipedia]

A living document or dynamic document is a document which may be continually edited and updated by either a limited or unrestricted group. A simple example of a living document is an article in Wikipedia, in contrast to "dead" or "static" documents, such as an article in a single edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
A living document may or may not have a framework for updates, changes, or adjustments. This type of document without proper context can change away from its original purpose through multiple uncontrolled edits.

This is different than an evergreen document that is written in a way that is relevant to a specific audience over a long period of time. This relevance comes from a universal acceptance or application of document contents. However, a living document may evolve through updates, be expanded as needed, and serve a different purpose over time.

Dynamics of Information

A document is information!

The dynamics of Information change dramatically when produced in a collaborative environment. Think of it the last time you wrote a report, did write it by your own, with a cowriter, did someone comment or correct it? That is just a start...

Did you publish a blog, anyone reacted, commented, ranked the statements? What was the last time you saw a webpage with HTML text on it? No?

NO! You only combined information didn't you? Picked a widget and mashed it with twitter feed, provided insight by using the geotags and publishing the data on a map, commented on it your self and published a link to the source which is provided by... well someone else you trust as a subject matter expert.

...and if you did not yet, you will consume and combine...

Documents supporting and fueling collaboration

A document is a platform!

Looking at these kind of dynamic documents it is designed to change with the need of information - real time. It attracts people to join and to share thoughts. A platform that helps to establish a community and supports interactivity and exchange of information can be very inspiring.

It is about people it is about YOU. What do YOU need and what can YOU give in return? So do I care about YOU? What does that mean to ME. How can I find YOU and what do WE know? HOW WE know?

Well we know because our peers value our thoughts, our comments, talk to you and me a lot and shared knowledge in projects with us.

Therefore information in our documents, our blogs and wiki's, can be of value to me and you. Lets work together!

Document knowledge

A document is just data!

Information, if captured in a document is still data if you have no clue how to value it. A document in all forms can be very dynamic and this value the information can provide is not only by consuming the information, but even more by adding information and interact with that information. Again, the data needs YOU. Then it can become knowledge and the document supports the interaction en exchange of information.

Can a document communicate?

A document is communication!

In classic communication we learned that we need roughly three essential ellements: sender - medium - receiver... So can a document be all of that? We looked at the document in several ways. The classic paper document is still a wonderfull and much appreciated medium. It is not the sender and it is not the receiver. It is kind of a dead object.
We also experienced a document conceptual as a platform where YOU and ME become WE, working together with worthwhile information, leveraging this information to knowledge. That is communication aint it?

What is a document?

So here we are, wondering what a document is. We know what it was, we can all experience that things are changing rapidly but can we even imagine what it will become.

Published in this Future of Productivity series:
Documents
The Cloud demands smarter devices, and cheap too!
Aan Het Werk! Aan de slag met Het Nieuwe Werken in het MKB
Office 365 walkthrough and more
Changing the game with Office 365
The Sweetspot of eReaders and Business Solutions
Small and Medium Business
Roadmap announcements BPOS

Future of productivity: Documents

2011-06-08T15:17:00.000+02:00

The first generation Document Management Systems (DMS) looked at a document in a classic way. It was a piece of paper, most of the time it really had a physical representation, even when 'stored' in the DMS. We believe a DMS helps to find information much faster, but we do not trust it to store important documents - we store them in a cabinet.

Still a lot of people look at a document this way, but the purpose of a document is changing rapidly. Information is accessed, collected, collaborated with and distributed in a much more fluid way. The document as we know it is dead.

We had a lot of control on our data sources, we even called these knowledge systems. Knowledge was the holy grail to better support the organization and to help it develop knowledge and support more productive processes. We were convinced we could manage these systems. The only thing we know however is that their should be a LOT of information in the system, but that's how close we often get to knowledge.

The first generation DMS took of in a time that the first word processors and spreadsheets became common. We stored most of these on a disk and now the network helped it to share it in a filesystem. We got lost and still are looking for a way out.

Email was meant to help us getting those nicely produced word and excel documents to another person. At first it worked brilliantly! We didn't have to walk over (and talk) to our colleague down the hall. 'Having' email was a privilege. The manager had mail access. He did not use it though, the assistent did. But when everybody had access to mail and a personal location to store data we discovered some drawbacks.

It got worse. We started to use email. We still use it in a way it is not meant. We try to support discussion and collaboration, while it only was meant to support the digital distribution of a message, like a digital postmen. When was the last time you talked to your postmen?

Bouncing around email with attachments like pingpong balls in a washing machine is not a good way to support communication and collaboration or to capture information that could be used to develop knowledge. Email systems evolved and now mimic a conversation in a thread. That looks oké from your point of view, but has no value at all when it comes to a conversation whithin a team.

Email systems even helped us to mimic the old fashion letter. Nice templates, fonts, pictures, it's all there. The email system became a wordprocessor and we used it like one. So now we have another source for our documents, don't we.

Some of us tried to start working with a DMS system the way it was meant to be or maybe better it has evolved to support the need of communication and collaboration. The DMS is dead, long live the DMS.

These systems look at communication and collaboration from the YOU point of view. Who are YOU talking to, what information do YOU need to fullfill your tasks, has someone sended YOU a letter about it.
From that starting point information sources and communication historie is assembled. It is shown in streams, social distance in your network to help you find information or knowledge more easy. The document is no longer the central object or source of information. The document is looked at in a way more conceptual way.

Structured data is often a central organized source. Central organized data does not guarantee quality, accessibility or being information however. Besides that...

...we know that information is not only stored in -structured- data (20%) but also in a way more non structured way (the other 80),

we often have no clue how to capture the information from it.

Development of technology took us by surprise (AGAIN). Today we quit mail (#WQM) and start to send over small text messages again. MICROblogs 'invented' by Evan Williams. The 140 char can be posted on a platform called Twitter.

So WQM and started to twitter, reaching a lot more people with neat tiny messages in one time, or snowballing messages to a big community. The platform has developed though and now we are able to shorten our messages by services like bit.ly making the message richer. Next we are also able to use services so we can extend our tweet length, we can attach files, photo's, use internal twitter services like Yammer that lack the 140 char boundary and so on. Brilliant we can hide a compleet document behind 140 characters or less!

You get the picture.

The neat start has become the next uncontainable source, looking to it from an information management perspective that is.

And if you think it is the only new form or source... think again. To make it easy for you, think about YouTube, Flickr, FaceBook and think these services combined...

Oh by the way, these are all services provided to you for free from The Cloud.

The Power Table

2011-06-08T13:49:00.000+02:00

The Power Table is een nieuw element dat in het Sourcingcongres zal worden toegepast.

Deelnemers zullen worden uitgedaagd door de zaalmoderator en tablemasters aan tafel om stelling te nemen rondom bepaalde geselecteerde topics. Ben heel benieuwd tot welke mooie resultaten dit zal leiden.

U kunt tabletopics verwachten als:

◦Cloud pricing
◦Flexibiliteit en kosten
◦Privacy
◦Security
◦Architectuur
◦Customer expectations
◦Deperimetrisatie
◦Het Nieuwe Werken
◦Een leverancierstafel
◦Open tables
◦Future competences

Zelf zal ik als tablemaster binnen deze thema's Documents to the cloud: don’t forget non structured data aan de kaak stellen. Nu al ideeen rondom dit onderwerp, laat het weten.

QR

2011-06-06T08:31:00.000+02:00

QR Ard van Someren

Cost and benefit of your cloud application on Azure - Part 1

2011-04-05T07:12:00.001+02:00

While exploring posibilities of cloud development I often stumble upon a lot of questions and some fragmented answers. It is an exiting project in which we turn existing on premise and partly classic hosted functionality into a cloud service. Main concern and focus on these kind of developments for our company for me is the viability of the business model. The way to investigate this is from a platform architecture and design patterns angle that influence the resulting application in several ways.

Part of that is of course cost, but this has to be considered in combination with technical issues as scalability, flexibility, performance and security for instance. Techonolgical innovation is business innovation and thus expanding opportunities, rather than just operations. Again, Azure is NOT about technology.
Moving an application to the cloud can be (seem to be) pretty straight forward. Starting with an existing application you can map several functionalities to this pure cloud based version of that application. Two basic considerations of this quick and dirty approach come to mind.

If not designed for the cloud, the application will not benefit from the promisses of the cloud. So flexibility and scalability can be less than expected.
Second when not properly designed the cost of the Cloud application can be unpredictably high. Promises that Cloud applications should be able to not only move from CAPEX to OPEX but potential have a better TCO will never meet expectations.

So for me is looking at the development of a new business model also overseeing the technical implications and map these on the current knowledge and competences of our development teams. When moving from the technical design and development of the application, the business model as a whole is designed too. This means a very broad look on the possibilities, market requirements, added value, deployment and delivery models, development roadmaps, pricing etc. All these considerations have to be mapped on the available resources and channels. When driving new business models an extra complexity is the changing knowledge and competences needed to run this business.

Security breach McKinsey - email adresses exposed after unauthorized entry of mail system service provider

2011-04-04T10:02:00.000+02:00

Last week McKinsey send a note to users from which email information was exposed due to unauthorized entry into the system of their email service provider.

Important information from McKinsey Quarterly

We have been informed by our e-mail service provider, Epsilon, that your e-mail address was exposed by unauthorized entry into their system. Epsilon sends e-mails on our behalf to McKinsey Quarterly users who have opted to receive e-mail communications from us.

We have been assured by Epsilon that the only information that was obtained was your first name, last name and e-mail address and that the files that were accessed did not include any other information. We are actively working to confirm this. We do not store any credit card numbers, social security numbers, or other personally identifiable information of our users, so we can assure you that no such information was accessed.

Please note, it is possible you may receive spam e-mail messages as a result. We want to urge you to be cautious when opening links or attachments from unknown third parties. Also know that McKinsey Quarterly will not send you e-mails asking for your credit card number, social security number or other personally identifiable information. So if you are ever asked for this information, you can be confident it is not from McKinsey.

We regret this has taken place and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We take your privacy very seriously, and we will continue to work diligently to protect your personal information.

McKinsey & Company

Nice little note from McKinsey, but makes you wonder or a little worried. I'm not the man who is worried lightly when it comes to security. Technology is becoming better every day, people are the biggest threath to security and security breaches will be there no matter what measures taken. Fact.

I do admire this gesture of openess by McKinsey. There was a problem and we are sorry is basicaly the message. We will take action to be sure your privacy is secure is what they tell you.

Some uncertainty stays behind. It gets into your head. Although there seems to be no harm done, no important information leaked, but security is all about fear and trust.

WerkBOX - StartReady nieuwsbrief nr 5 maart 2011

2011-03-27T11:36:00.000+02:00

StartReady bouwt Ricoh WerkBOX

StartReady bouwt Ricoh WerkBOX zo kopt de laatste nieuwsbrief van StartReady van maart 2011.

'Startready faciliteert en host de Ricoh werkbox. Dit op SharePoint gebaseerde systeem is volledig geïntegreerd met de Ricoh Multifunctional. De Ricoh werbox digitaliseerd alle informatie binnen de organisatie. Deze informatie wordt gescanned en vervolgens in de juiste mappen opgeslagen. Vanaf een beveiligde omgeving kunnen medewerkers deze informatie raadplegen. Klik voor info op www.ricohwerkbox.nl'

Startready en Ricoh zijn beide Goldcertified partners van Microsoft.

Planning for The Pacific Coast Highway - PCH

2011-03-20T15:56:00.001+01:00

Common travel desitination when in California is to visit Yosemite, Salt Lake City, Death Valey, Las Vegas and so on. Great destinations! I'm planning to extend my business trip to Los Angeles with a week to travel the PCH from L.A. to San Fransisco. A famous trip down the California Coast on Highway one.

At this moment I'm not yet sure which stops to make and where to stay. So let's find out what are the must see sites along the road. Hit the road!

Wetten, regelgeving en normen - wie is verantwoordelijk?

2011-03-19T07:50:00.001+01:00

Met regelmaat stoeien organisaties met de vraag. Met welke wet -en regelgeving krijg ik te maken als mijn organisatie een archief in wil richten? En wie is er dan verantwoordelijk voor het voldoen aan de daarvoor geldende normen?

Zo gaf ik in een eerdere Blog al eens aan. Dat deze vraag tot serieuze onduidelijkheid leidt bewijst de zaak waarbij tot aan de Raad van State getoetst is of een NEN-norm algemeen binding is. Deze zaak (201002804/1/H1 - 2 feb 2011) geeft ook wel aan dat de dynamiek tussen praktijk en wetgeving niet altijd tot helderheid leidt.

In deze zaak gaat over het Bouwbesluit 2003. In hoofdstuk 2 wordt in de integrale wetteksten intensief verwezen naar de normen die zijn ontwikkeld door en voor bouwend Nederland. Het beheer van deze normen ligt bij NEN.

Zowel normering als wetgeving volgen ontwikkelingen in de markt. Normen worden opgesteld als afspraak en richtlijn. Toepassen van deze normen betekent dat daarmee aan de geldende wetgeving die als uitgangspunt wordt genomen voor de opgestelde norm voldaan kan worden.

De nadruk zo blijkt ook uit de uitspraak van de Hogeraad in deze zaak ligt op KAN. Een norm is richtinggevend, normerend. Een norm is niet bindend. De wet is dat wèl. Met andere woorden afwijken van een norm mag en kan als daarmee de wet niet overtreden wordt.

Verder geeft deze zaak aan hoe complex interpretatie van wetten en normen kan zijn. De Raad van State geeft in haar uitspraak aan dat de overheid niet verantwoordelijk is voor de publicatie (het beheer) van de normen waar in haar wetteksten naar verwezen wordt. Dit is en blijft de verantwoordelijkheid van de privaterechtelijke organisatie die deze heeft opgesteld en in beheer heeft, in casu de NEN.

In een artikel van de NEN wordt als volgt over deze uitspraak bericht:

NEN-normen ook volgens Raad van State niet algemeen verbindend

De Raad van State deed 2 februari uitspraak in een hoger beroep (201002804/1/H1). Met de uitspraak bevestigt de Raad de conclusie die het Gerechtshof in Den Haag op 16 november 2010 trok. Deze uitspraak benadrukt nogmaals de status van de door het Bouwbesluit aangewezen NEN-normen.

De Raad van State stelt:

NEN-normen zijn en blijven vastgestelde regels door een privaatrechtelijke organisatie;

NEN-normen zijn geen ‘algemeen verbindende voorschriften’ die door het Rijk zijn vastgesteld en daarom hoeven NEN-normen niet in het Staatsblad of Staatscourant te worden gepubliceerd;

Omdat het Bouwbesluit 2003 wetgeving is en naar NEN-normen verwijst, moeten de normen wel kenbaar worden gemaakt;

Daarvoor is vereist dat bij de verwijzing vermeld wordt wat de vindplaats van het document of van de norm is;

De kenbaarheid voor de burger is voldoende verzekerd omdat de NEN-normen voor de burger ter inzage liggen bij NEN. De kenbaarheid van NEN-normen voor bouwers, architecten, installateurs en andere bij de bouw direct betrokkenen is voldoende verzekerd, omdat zij de NEN-normen tegen redelijke betaling kunnen aanschaffen.

Wat zijn normen?

Normen zijn afspraken, praktische richtlijnen, die gemaakt worden door en voor de markt. Het Bouwbesluit 2003 verwijst naar NEN-normen. Als deze normen worden toegepast, wordt voldaan aan de eisen die het Bouwbesluit stelt. Maar er mag ook op een andere wijze aan de eisen worden voldaan. Er moet dan wel worden aangetoond dat het resultaat ten minste gelijkwaardig is aan het resultaat wanneer de norm zou zijn toegepast.

Aanleiding van de rechtszaak

Een partij had een bestuursrechtelijke zaak aangespannen tegen de gemeente ’s-Hertogenbosch omdat deze een verleende bouwvergunning onterecht zou hebben ingetrokken. De bouwvergunning werd ingetrokken omdat in het bouwplan niet aan de ‘verplichte’ NEN-normen werd voldaan en op verzoek van de gemeente ook geen aanvullende gegevens zijn geleverd die aantoonden dat wel aan de minimale eisen werd voldaan. De gemeente is in het gelijk gesteld.

Vraag gestuurde informatie bij de gemeenten - Informatie is Chaos

2011-03-15T20:07:00.000+01:00

De overheid heeft de afgelopen jaren fors ingezet op elektronische dienstverlening en het ontsluiten van overheidsinformatie voor burgers en bedrijven. Tegelijkertijd zag met name de rijksoverheid zich geconfronteerd met toenemende digitale informatiestromen waardoor ook de eigen informatiehuishouding steeds ingewikkelder werd.

3 maart j.l. heeft het event van eBurg plaatsgevonden. Het Thema van het event was: De gemeente agenda 2010 - 2014.

Ard van Someren behandelt in zijn lezing met de titel 'vraaggestuurde informatie bij de gemeenten' de complexiteit van die informatiehuishouding, alsmede hoe vragen van burgers deze huishouding beïnvloeden. Besproken wordt hoe afwijkende vragen de gestandaardiseerde processen van de veel voorkomende vragen totaal kunnen verstoren. Logischer is om de vragen te groepen en te stroomlijnen.

Daarnaast signaleert Van Someren een trend: van push naar pull. Informatie wordt meer vraaggestuurd. Hij bespreekt wat deze verschuiving betekent voor de digitale informatiehuishouding:

hoe ga je die inrichten;
hoe ga je die beheren en
hoe zorg je ervoor dat informatie ook op juiste manier hergebruikt kan worden in de juiste context.

Tot slot gaat Van Someren in op de voorwaarden voor werken met vraaggestuurde informatie.

Kijk voor webcast en presentatie op de site van eBurg.

The Future Of Productivity - The Cloud demands smarter devices, and cheap too!

2011-03-06T08:40:00.001+01:00

The smarter device - one of five dimensions
The Cloud demands smarter devices is one of the dimensions that Steve Balmer introduced when he claimed that Microsoft was - All In - last year at the Washington University. Microsoft COO Kevin Turner mentioned a sweet spot in their ´three screens and a cloud´ vision on the future of productivity during his 2010 WPCDC speech. An open space between the consumer focused space of the apple iPad and the fat desktop devices on the other end. Actualy he positioned the Kindle on the the far right end of the spectrum, but that is the kindle static ´read only´ interface.

A new Game
...It is not about the interface, added value is about making content available, mixability. This is the changing game, new opportunites demanding other skills, new kind of job opportunies, new ways of combining information, crowdsourcing, mashedup apps never thought even possible.

...It is not about technique, added value is about making technology available. Hardware is becomming cloud enabled and web applications are becomming 'client aware' (*). No need to worry about where to put your data, how to format your information considering the different form factors of hardware that will be used now and in the future to access the information.

...It is not about YOUR device, added value is about a seamless experience. Transparant adding information both in digital and analog format. Transparant extracting information or sharing content again. No need to worry about, 'where is MY digital environment to put my information?'. No need to worry about, 'where is my printer where I can send this document to?'. The devices are there and so is the functionality to add or extract your information, where ever you are, when ever you need it. As Larry Ellison (Founder and CEO Oracle) stated a long time ago: 'The network is the computer'. So bring your own device (BYOD) or maybe even you do not need to bring any device. The information you need is simply there.

In an earlier post I mentioned a development of Ricoh. A device near the right end spectrum of Kevin Turner. Rumor is that this device is turning the eReader into an eWriter. I am currious how the layer is added on top of the reading capabilities of the Kindle. Will keep you posted on that.

Pay as you go
If the added value is not in the device itself but in the production and consumption of the information. What does these developments mean for the position of the devices, the pricing of the devices and the business models? Prices will drop dramatically! Devices like an eReader are just a window to the information and will deliver information to the masses. Forrester recommends strategists to diversify their next wave eReader portfolio to secure their ownership of reading experience. Forrester mentioned a drop to a price level of $50 for a stripped down pocket reader.
Apple is speeding up their iPAD release frequency with the iPAD2. The rumor machine about iPAD3 started even before the release date of the iPAD2 was revealed. The second version of the popular leader in the segment is mainly an incremental update of the iPAD. The pricing of the updated version will not change, leading to a dramatically drop of the pricing of the predecessor.
With the comments of Steve Jobs about the price level of the new version, the features of the new version and the rumour that this new version will be released early 2012, put an enormous pressure on the competition. Steve Jobs calls them the copy cats by the way.

It will be hard for the device manufactors to maintain their position and to keep up with the expected experience of added value. In my opinion, the biggest challenge is to 'blend' with the cloud and the information.

(*)Intel has developed a technology for cloud-based web applications to recognise the hardware capabilities from client computers, leading to a better optimised experience for end users.

March 7
Mary-Jo Foley posted a blog on a Microsoft research project: 'A low-tech Microsoft slate for the masses'.

On pricing the researchers estimate a cost of $100 when massmanufactured:
'While there are “no immediate commercialization plans” for the low-tech slate, the researchers estimated that a single unit witht he digital slate and pen could cost about $100 (U.S.) if/when mass-manufactured.'

She concludes the post with: 'I have no idea what Microsoft’s intentions are regarding this device/market, but still thought it worth noting that there’s room — and need — for lots of different kinds of slates and tablets, at lots of different price points. Microsoft seems to still consider the stylus/pen as worth supporting in slate/tablet designs (as do a lot of you readers). I wonder how many of the coming Windows 8 slates will provide pen-input, alongside multi-touch….'

Winkeltje - vandaag gesloten

2011-03-05T10:18:00.000+01:00

Winkeltje
Onlangs ging leaseplan met haar website over naar een nieuwe infrastructuur. Hoe weet ik dat? Nu, de website was niet beschikbaar gedurende het weekeinde. Leaseplan heeft ongetwijfeld gedacht dat haar klanten in het weekeinde niet 'werken'.

Buiten dat het mij is opgevallen dat in deze tijd een website een heel weekeinde (vrijdag 5 uur tot maandag ergens in in de vroege ochtend) schonk ik er in eerste instantie niet veel aandacht aan. Ik had genoeg andere dingen te doen en echt haast had ik niet met het bestellen van een nieuwe leasebak (ik rijd al sinds 4,5 jaar iets wat beschikbaar is op het parkingdeck).

Niet beschikbaar

Wel had ik toen al zoiets van, dat is niet nodig... Toen al had ik even de neiging om er wat over te schrijven. Dus waarom kom ik er nu op terug? Nu, vandaag dacht ik laat ik het nog eens proberen...

Het moet wel weer erg goed gaan met de autobranche denk ik dan. Maar misschien dat dit er niets mee te maken heeft.

BRON: mobiliteit in cijfers 2010/2011 van BOVAG / RAI

Serverruimte
Als ik zo'n gesloten online winkel tegenkom, dan stel ik me hun infrastructuur voor. Oude hardware 'draaiend' in het rek. Een hoekje een klein stukje verder waar een geheel nieuw 19" rek staat, de kabeltjes netjes aan de achterzijde bij elkaar gebonden. In de hoek liggen de lege dozen waar de splinternieuwe servers, switches en storage units in zijn binnengekomen.

Bij de oude infrastructuur staan een aantal beheerders in spijkerbroek t-shirt en gympies. Ze kijken wat nieuwschierig, maar vooral jaloers naar het hoekje met de nieuwe hardware. Het is daar druk. De ICT manager die anders nooit in de serverruimte te vinden is vanwege het lawaai en de lage temperatuur, kijkt over de schouder van twee vreemde jongens heen. De leverancier van de hardware en een technisch specialist 'consultant' van de integrator. Ze horen de consultant zeggen, 'mooi spul, cluster, automatische failover, redundant uitgevoerd'. Weemoedig kijken ze terug naar de inmiddels gedemonteerde oude server en gaan verder met het maken van de laatste backup op de oude tapeunit. 'Volgende week krijgen we cursus'.

Dat kan anders... dat MOET anders
De wereld is enorm aan het veranderen. De schets van het bovenstaande verhaal is natuurlijk fictief en ik claim daarmee ook niet dat dit het geval is bij Leaseplan, laat ik daar duidelijk over zijn. Ik neem dat wat ik opmerkelijk vind ter illustratie mee. Even geleden schetste ik een verhuizing bij het Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis in Den Bosch.

In het geval van de fysieke verhuizing van een rekencentrum denk ik aan bijvoorbeeld de risico's die daarmee gepaard gaan, de enorme hoeveelheden voorbereidingen om succes te kunnen garanderen tot en met het weghalen van 'obstakels' als verkeersdrempels op de route naar de nieuwe locatie. Ik denk daar ook aan de tijd die een dergelijke fysieke verhuizing in beslag neemt.
Neem nu het voorbeeld bij Leaseplan waar ik nu dankbaar gebruik van maak. Een gewaardeerde dienst waar leaserijders veel gebruik van maken is zich verlekkeren aan nieuwe modellen die zij zich kunnen permiteren (of net niet binnen hun budget vallen). Het kiezen van een nieuwe auto is als een kind in een snoepwinkel (met een kwartje). De teleurstelling is 'groot' als niet berekend kan worden of de auto afgeladen met accesoires nu net wel of niet meer in het budget valt. Leaseplan heeft zich in dit geval sterk verkeken op de capaciteit die voor het betrouwbaar leveren van deze dienst nodig is. Blijkbaar zijn ze ook niet in staat om dit gat te dichten en in te spelen op de fluctuaties in de vraag.

Het web is altijd open, vertrouwen is key
Als je er voor kiest om je handel naar het web te verplaatsen, in het geval van Leaseplan een heel valide keuze, dan moet je er rekening mee houden dat er andere wetten gelden. De winkel is altijd open en de aangeboden diensten zijn nooit uitverkocht.

Deze keuze echter heeft onherroepelijk grote gevolgen voor de architectuur van de business. Organisatorisch (Wehkamp werd online succesvol omdat ze begrepen dat achter de webwinkel een goede bereikbare klantenservice en efficiënte distributie nodig was) evenals infrastructureel technisch. In het geval van Leaseplan is mijn advies, denk eens na over het gebruik van een elastisch ingerichte architectuur als het gaat om het verwerken van deze transactie.

Klanten verwachten dat ze zelf kunnen bepalen wanneer ze een webwinkel bezoeken, of het nu gaat om het bestellen van een boek of een trui, het opvragen van de openingstijden of een route beschrijving of het berekenen van de leasekosten van een auto en niet onbelangrijk het plaatsten van de bestelling.

Cloud computing - The Cloud needs smarter devices

2011-02-06T15:37:00.000+01:00

A while ago Steve Balmer CEO of Microsoft declared that Microsoft is All In at the Washington State University, starting the campaign well known today. Back then Microsoft provided us with a definition on what Cloud is in their opinion:

The cloud is a computing model where physical computers are abstracted in a way to enable people, whether they are at work or play, to have access to there data across devices. Interact with friends, families or colleagues, make better decisions and power the world businesses.

Dimensions
Microsoft highlights five dimensions of The Cloud:

The cloud creates business opportunity's and responsibility
The cloud learns and helps you to learn, decide and take action
The cloud enhances your social and professional interactions
The cloud wants smarter devices
The cloud drives server advances that drives the cloud

The Cloud wants smarter devices

In the light of this subject I found the following news publication from a week ago interesting: microsoft and Ricoh anounced a global partnership:

Ricoh and Microsoft Partner in Cloud Business

Combining Microsoft's cloud services with Ricoh's nationwide sales and support

structure to drive enterprise IT deployment and utilization
Ricoh Co., Ltd. (head office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; CEO, President and Representative Director: Shiro Kondo), Ricoh Japan Corporation (head office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; CEO, President and Representative Director: Kenji Hatanaka) and affiliated sales companies in Japan (hereinafter referred to as the Ricoh Group) and Microsoft Co., Ltd. (head office: Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Yasuyuki Higuchi) have announced that they will partner in cloud business.

Overview of Partnership

1.Joint development and provision of solutions by the Ricoh Group and Microsoft

The two companies will offer solutions that combine Microsoft's cloud services for the enterprise including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and etc., with Ricoh's helpdesk, deployment support and other services. They will also combine these services with Ricoh's NETBegin BB Pack Select, an information system integration and maintenance service for small and midsized businesses used to date by 90,000 companies in Japan, to generate synergy with the aim of gaining 200,000 users nationwide over the coming three years.

2.Training of human resources for cloud service rollout

With respect to its rollout of cloud services, the Ricoh Group will apply its well-developed on-site information system sales and support structure to the development of cloud business. To this end, Microsoft will provide training to 11,700 sales personnel and engineers of the Ricoh Group around Japan to enhance their understanding of relevant products and technology.

3.Joint marketing, sales and support

Microsoft will leverage Smart Business Center, its general information website for small and midsized businesses, to disseminate information, hold seminars and otherwise further strengthen its collaboration with the Ricoh Group to implement sales promotion activities, sales and customer support.

Ricoh Japan plans to leverage this partnership to double its sales of Microsoft products in Japan to \20 billion within the coming three years. Ricoh too will further accelerate the global rollout of all of its IT services through applying the achievements and success stories of its partnership with Microsoft in Japan to its global business. Microsoft will continue to work with the Ricoh Group to promote the deployment and utilization of IT by businesses.

Partnership Background

As a leading Microsoft Large Account Reseller (LAR) and Microsoft product solutions partner in Japan, the Ricoh Group has long provided Microsoft products to a wide range of customers from small to large enterprises. Ricoh currently sells over \10 billion worth of Microsoft licenses annually through a well-developed sales and support structure manned by approximately 7,700 sales personnel and 4,000 engineers stationed in 310 sites (including group companies) that provide the same high quality customer services throughout Japan. Ricoh has also been looking into the possibilities for applying the strengths and expertise that it has built up over the years to the handling of Microsoft's cloud-related offerings.

Microsoft for its part has long sought to drive the further take-up of its Microsoft Online Services through cooperating with partners equipped with rich sales and support capabilities for serving customers nationwide.

The two companies decided to work together in the cloud business because they felt that combining Microsoft's products and technological capabilities with the Ricoh Group's sales and support networks will enable delivery of cost reductions, shorter deployment time and other cloud service strengths backed up by a structure for providing the same high quality support as for on-site systems.

January 25, 2011
Ricoh Company, Ltd.
RICOH JAPAN Corporation
Microsoft Co., Ltd

Wetten, regelgeving en normen rondom archieven - wie is verantwoordelijk?

2011-01-26T12:06:00.001+01:00

Met regelmaat stoeien organisaties met de vraag. Met welke wet -en regelgeving krijg ik te maken als mijn organisatie een archief in wil richten? En wie is er dan verantwoordelijk voor het voldoen aan de daarvoor geldende normen?

Wet -en regelgeving in het kader van een DMS of archiefsysteem slaat in eerste instantie op die organisaties die vanuit wetgeving gehouden worden aan de archiefwet van 1995 (zie ook leesbare uitleg archiefschool) en de daarvoor opgestelde norm voor archiefsystemen NEN 2082 en die voor het beheer van archiefbescheiden voor archiefvormende organisaties NEN 15489. Eigenlijk spreek je indien je het hebt over een systeem wat voldoet aan NEN2082 ook niet over een DMS maar over een Records Management Applicatie (RMA).
Met andere woorden de 'klant' zal zich voor de inrichting van haar organisatie en de processen in haar organisatie rekenschap moeten geven van de eisen die aan haar gesteld worden vanuit de wet. Van toepassing is de NEN 15489. Indien een organisatie gebruik maakt van een archiefsysteem welke is gecertificeerd volgens NEN 2082 mag ze er vanuit gaan dat het systeem ingericht kan worden zodat deze de verplichting van de organisatie om de onder hen berustende archiefbescheiden in goede, geordende en toegankelijke staat te brengen en te bewaren, alsmede zorg te dragen voor de vernietiging van de daarvoor in aanmerking komende archiefbescheiden ondersteund.

Met nadruk kan, omdat vanaf het moment dat gestart wordt met de inrichting van het systeem de compliancy met wetgeving niet meer gegarandeerd is. Mogelijkheid is om het geïmplementeerde systeem vervolgens te laten certificeren tegen dezelfde norm zoals dat is uitgevoerd bij de gemeente Nieuwegein.

Het deel waar het gaat over het garanderen dat het systeem instaat is om een organisatie te ondersteunen met het voldoen aan de eisen van de archiefwet (NEN 2082) is de verantwoordelijkheid van de softwareleverancier. Maar let op indien dit systeem wordt geïmplementeerd door bijvoorbeeld een integrator is dat nog geen garantie dat dit ook 'goed' gedaan wordt en kan die garantie door een leverancier enkel geleverd worden door de implementatie zelf te laten toetsen door bijvoorbeeld de ECB. Het voorbeeld van Nieuwegein is in de wereld van de gemeenten uniek als het gaat over de toetsing en de bestpractice maakt onderdeel uit van een propositie die door Ricoh samen met QNH wordt gehanteerd. In diezelfde gemeenten is nog geen certificering volgens NEN 15489 uitgevoerd.

Are you being served? - Jeroen Bosch ziekenhuis Den Bosch

2011-01-23T17:39:00.000+01:00

In het Brabantsdagblad verscheen zaterdag 22 jan 2011 een artikel rondom het Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis in Den Bosch met de titel 'Wordt u al geholpen'. Het Jeroen Bosch heeft eind december 2010 de sleutel van haar nieuwbouw in Den Bosch ontvangen en heeft in de opzet van de nieuwe locatie goed nagedacht over het verbeteren van haar dienstverlening aan de patiënt.

Drie Musketiers
De samenvoeging van drie ziekenhuizen in de regio naar 1 locatie is een unieke kans geweest om er voor te zorgen dat het Jeroen Bosch beter is voorbereid op de ontwikkelingen in de maatschappij, waarin thema's als vergrijzing en de steeds mondigere patiënt grote impact hebben op de efficiëncy van de ziekenhuizen van morgen.

De patiënt centraal - 'patiënt vriendelijk en patiënt gericht'
Het idee is dat bij de inrichting van de dienstverlening van het ziekenhuis de behoeften van de patiënt centraal komen staan. Revolutionair? Nee, het is een ontwikkeling die al sinds de roerige jaren 60 gaande is en niet enkel in de zorg. Een ontwikkeling die er voor heeft gezorgd dat de relatie tussen arts en patiënt van ver verheven magiër is verworden tot een (meer) volwassen relatie, waarin de patiënt een rol in het geprek heeft gekregen.

Schaarste van kennis
De tijd dat de zieke mens volledig was overgeleverd aan de enkeling die de kennis tijdens een jaarlijkse openbare sessie (*) moest delen aan een exclusief groepje medemagiërs is voorbij.

Beschikbaarheid van informatie
Kennis in de context van het hedendaagse ziekenhuis gaat echter verder dan de vaardigheid om een aderlating uit te voeren.
Centralisatie van een patiënt vraagt om nog een stap verder in het beschikbaar krijgen van informatie. Dat begint bij het moment dat een patiënt een ziekenhuis binnenstapt. Het registreren van een patiënt of melden van de aankomst van de patiënt is de eerste stap.
Het Jeroen Bosch beschrijft het als een geheel nieuwe manier van werken en heeft daarvoor een instructiefilm voor patient en verzorgend personeel in voorbereiding.

De nieuwe werkwijze past in het digitale tijdperk, waarin er gewerkt wordt met een elektronisch patiëntendossier in plaats van een papieren dossier en ligt geheel in lijn met de ambitie om het meest patiëntgerichte ziekenhuis van Nederland te zijn.

(*) 1632 De anatomische les van Dr. Nicolaes Tulp

Prototype this: Flying LifeGuard

2011-01-20T21:28:00.000+01:00

Prototype this: Flying lifeguard.
Discovery channel Jan 19th 2011.

Great to see how the development team works together on solving complex problems in a limited amount of time. In this episode the team was told by the life guard how people are rescued and what critical moments have the biggest impact on success - Life or Death...
Most important is:

receive the destress signal,
pinpoint location of the drawning man and
time to get to the location

I like the way this team designs two possible rescue devices. One for short range and one for long range rescue support. I love the way technology is used to get the destress signal out and pinpoint the location. I am impressed by the simplicity of the concept: win time by supplying the drawning man with a lifevest so the life guard has more time to succeed.

The link leads to a short version. Not shown in this version is the proces of solving complex problems and the way the team handles the pressure of time. The solution however for the short and long range rescue device is shown.

Google removes SLA clause that allows downtime of services, but is satisfied with 99.984% uptime

2011-01-16T09:25:00.001+01:00

I stumbled upon a typical me too, I'm not able to set my own goals Google blog (again). Because it is the official Google blog, I presume this is a kind of official vision of the future of the user experience of availablity from Google. So, why this I'm better than everyone and Microsoft particular flavoured message?

Cut the crap! If you are convinced this is a good step to excellence (which I do agree on) just do it! Let competition decide by them selves if they need the public that care.

Providing the servicelevel is the USP, the crap behind that is NOT.

Google removes clause that allows downtime of services

Which is a good thing, but still mind that stating this ambition means that it is not acceptable to start with explaining that a little downtime - seven-minute average downtime a month represents the accumulation of small delays of a few seconds, and most people experienced no issues at all - is the same as a 100% uptime.
You can only buildup your reliability if you do not except that last seven minutes and promise to bridge that last gap to 100% uptime. The customer is not stupid you know. So take your ambition, but first of all the user a 100% serious.

added link to Blog post of Sytse van der Schaaf (Dutch) on IT executive: Apekool van Google

Remoddeling the realworld - The rise and fall of SEO

2011-01-15T12:04:00.000+01:00

At the rise of Search the public couldn't believe that a single search box could ever return adequate results from all over the web at all. SEO evaluated enormous, but when it comes to results that reflect your needs more exact SEO is not the holy grail.

For example business apps do use other indexing mechanisme like metadata combined with a social distance in addition to ranking. I do believe the public gut feeling that SEO will not provide you with the right answer will become real in the end. At least a part of that feeling. I also believe that the quality of results could improve by adding the social component in SEO.

So is it time to redefine gravity and implement a new model to assure that we still will find relevant and authentic information in the future? I do think it is time to innovate.

Trouble in the house of Google.

Great article on this subject posted Jan 3 2011 on coding horror Blog by Jeff Atwood of Stack Overflow, named Trouble in the house of Google.

In this article Jeff Atwood questions the practice of content syndication. Sharing knowledge including information in websites and blogs is not a problem and should be encouraged. But information has value and when shared, the origin should be included. Especially when the context of the information is relevant to the quality of the information. When your information is used and shared, you expect at least that the shared content is looped back to you as author. Not because this is good practice in sense of creative rights only.

When information and knowledge is your business and content syndication is turning into content piracy you go out and check the source. It is very disturbing if you find out that the very core structure of finding information on the web has no mechanism to prevent this ripping of sites.

It looks like the system has been broken and the problem lies in the core itself. Professional Sharecropping became the spam of SEO.

Move your business or move to the cloud

2010-12-27T08:51:00.000+01:00

*************************

Moving physical information - the old days
In the old days moving to an other location was a hell of a job. The basement contained more than ten kilometers archive. Stored there for years to come. Most files are kept because of legislation. Although some files are kept to be sure instead of sorry.

Moving physical information - put it in the datacenter
In the last say ten years things changed. Is it possible to digitize these paper files? Can we store the data on disk to avoid the enormous growth of storage room needed? Indeed we can to a certain amount. Still legislations was a boundary or is it just us not wanting to change?

Another mind shift caused change. Why not (re)use the data? Make it available in a more profitable way to the organization? Technologie provided us with a portal, search engines to make data available. We even managed to interpreted the data and turned it into information and nowadays we taking steps to knowledge be reusing and recombining the retrieved information.

Still we suffer from cold feet. Security and access rights trow a spanner in the works. In order to satisfy our sense of security we want to keep the data closeby and keep information hidden for the organization.

I know it is not easy and can feel uncomfortable to embrace change, but you know, we have to in order to move forward. Consider the following story and decide for your self if this is what we wish to keep doing. Is this where we want to put our money?

Move your business - physically

The city of Den Bosch in the south of the Netherlands is building a new hospital. It is located near the new constructed center called 'Paleiskwartier'. In the end three hospitals will move from 6 locations to one new modern hospital in the center of the city.

Jeroen Bosch Hospital is moving to a new location

It will be close to the railstation and a lot of facilities you expect near to a modern hospital.
In order to manage information effective and efficiënt the hospital has there information about their patient digital available. The physician and the nursing staff have the needed information at hand immediatly when needed.

Down in the cellar their are no paper files left. All data is stored digitaly, even information is available to the organization. More than a year ago the hospital decided to move to this new location. A huge opperation with a big impact

Moving the archive (probably a more than 30km paper equivalent) which is digitized is a complete other kind of operation. The equipment where these files are stored have to be deinstalled from the original datacenter, shiped to the new location and installed in the new datacenter. This is far beyond normal operation.

System managers are used to fade out old equipement, moving data to new hardware and keeping systems operational. But once the equipement is litteraly going offline and is loaded in a truck other professionals are moved in.

Risks of moving

Moving this kind of delicate equipment, still mounted in their origional 19 inch racks with this huge amount of information installed, needs years of preperation. When the operation is started it has to be finished as sceduled till all equipment is installed, tested and proved operational in the new datacenter.

Taking out 'hibernating' information out of the safity of the datacenter is a risk for security, will interupt normal availability and continuity and therefore all aspects of risk are breached.

Moving the equipment physically will impact even more to the risk of loss. Ofcourse the data itself is backed up and the restore procedures are tested and proved. But these measures are invented in case of problems and these has to prevented in the first place. So the route from the old to the new location is analysed. Obstacles are removed, meaning litteraly removing bumps so the truck will move as smooth as possible.

The adjustments to the route made this operation complex and very costly. This made me courious. There is another way to move information from one location to the other, we use it every day. Why not removing every obstacle that is causing all these risks in the first place? The fact that the information is stored on these physical assets causes these complexity in the operation.

Moving your Business or moving to the cloud

If the retrieval of information, the collaboration services and the dossiers of the patients where located in a cloud, the operation described would take about a second. True, moving to a cloud based infrastructure is not a walk in the park. It is a big challenge and a lot of chief officers responsible for all aspects of secure and high quality information have second thoughts about moving to the cloud. But when you start planning and preparing to move your business, you might considering moving to the cloud.

The Future of productivity - Office 365 walktrough and more

2010-12-18T12:16:00.001+01:00

Since the official worldwide launch of the Microsoft productivity suite Office 365 by Kurt DelBene last October, there has been an enormous amound of information published on the web. Most of us saw some glimps of the product and its promising functionality, few of us had the privilige to experience its real power yet. Since Office 365 is not global available and only a 'few' countries are picked to do some beta for us.
Microsoft has published a paper with an overview of the functionality of the Office365 BETA.

So what things are changed since the predecessor BPOS and what does it mean for us?

That was yesterday
Office 365 is the succesor of BPOS. BPOS was the first released business productivity suite in the Online SKU. The suite included mail functionality with Exchange, a platform for storing and collaborating on information with SharePoint and communication with the OCS platform as most important components.
In Office 365 these functionalities are still there and are now based on the 2010 suites from the On-Premise SKU. This means that functionality is based on SharePoint Server 2010 and OCS is now called Lync Server.

High Fidelity of the Future of Productivity
Business Productivity is not only about storing, sharing and discussing about information, it is also about creating information with the usual means and in a familiar way. Leverage the skills already available and support optimizing these skills to produce information for the organization as a whole.
By adding Office Professional Plus to the online suite Microsoft lowered the differences in the user experience working Online or On-Premise.

So there you are. Four main functional online services for the end user, supporting Business Productivity.

The limitation of success
BPOS for me was a rather unexpected success due to the limitations of the suite. Well there are a lot of arguments to use the suite to support Business Productivity. The suite does deliver a competitive package of services in my opinion. Till now however the limitations will block the possibility to extend beyond the standard. So what did Microsoft to diminish these limitations and to seduce partners to use the suite more in the future?

Role based access and permissions
New to Office 365 is that this suite now realy is one suite of functionalities working together instead of a knotted together package of offerings. Access to Office 365 is now role based. Just one portal to all users and permissions based on the role. So an administrator has the functions available to manage the environment and a user can access his mail and accept a call or a task assigned to him.

Signing in
Office 365 has the abillity to use ADFS. This service provides a single signon access to the environment. No hassle with other user credentials and a lot better fit supporting business integration and security requirements.

Can I have one for my self?
Yes you can since Office365 is supporting the mysite which will give you a personal page. This page however is very more than just a personal siloed site to store some information. To support and encourage you to share, the user activity and the interests you indicate by rank a article or a document for instance, is collected and 'published' to your contacts. This means you will be helped with smart and fast access to the knowledge of the organization while looking for information based on your social distance and the relevance calculated through ranking, search results and so on. MySite will fullfill this information hub functionality.

Adding value
BPOS had this limitation which partner where quit disappointed with. The possibility to deliver their stuff on top of the Microsoft platform was not possible. You can extend BPOS but it is very limited. This has changed with Office 365. Why is this so important for the Microsoft Partner Network community and Microsoft too? The model Microsoft has chosen a long time ago is delivering functionality through partners. They add a huge amount of knowledge to the basic platforms and will be able to do so based on the On-Premise SKU as well as on the Online SKU.
Focus will be a requirement for the partners too. It will be difficult if not impossible to maintain a mixed business model in the long future.

From selling licences to providing business productivity services
Microsoft is aiming no longer on selling licences in the future. This change of business model is closely related to the move to the cloud. Claiming to be All In means also adjusting your supporting business model. Selling licences does not match with Cloud services. Cloud is NOT about technology or products at all, in my opinion. Providing services is another ball game and Microsoft is changing their relation with partner ànd consumer. Now today Microsoft is changing this partner and distribution model. Future focus will be on delivering these business productivity services in all aspects.

The Power to Think Big and Be Small, to Be Big and Act Fast
The standard edition of BPOS was limited to 30.000 users (I never had the pleasure to close a deal on that much users in a standard BPOS environment). This limitation is dropped. There is no max limit on the users. Being BIG is one thing, to be able to serve even the smallest organizations with the same top notch technology available for the big enterprise is something else. The minimal amount of users is dropped too! This means that everyone starting a business can use the functionality.
So are you going to have a webconference with your self? Well no, but are you doing business with your self?

I've embedded an video from the 2010 TechEd Europe session Office 365 walkthrough of David Anderson. You could watch and listen to this recording to get more insight than I cover in this Blog. (It is a recording from TechEd, so expect some Tech talk about administration and security and so on. Productivity in the eyes of David is the productivity of the IT Pro in first place)

Social Media can be powerfull - even for Social Media

2010-12-18T08:12:00.002+01:00

A rumour started a chain reaction. Yahoo! will shutdown the social bookmark service Delicious. The tag #Delicious ended up as a worldwide trending tag. (however a lot of the tags are just about Delicious). The twitter account @delicious must have noticed, as they are claiming in their profile: The official Twitter account for Delicious from Yahoo!. We listen to people talking about Delicious, and we respond. Yay.

So Yahoo! discovered that their early introduced services is appreciated and responded by placing a blog post : Whats next for delicious. So it looks like this early public folksonomy service will survive.

Still wondering what will hapen to Yahoo! as a company. Early 2007 their was a serious rumour about a take over from Microsoft. In the same period Microsoft took over the highend search technology from FAST. The takeover did not succeed. However mid 2009 Microsoft and Yahoo! ended up with an agreement - Microsoft will power Yahoo! Search.

Now December 17th an article describes how the employees of Yahoo! are reacting on these socialmedia attention.

Is Yahoo! preparing to sell just a little bit more than 'just' their folksonomy service?

Aan Het Werk! - Aan de slag met Het Nieuwe Werken in het MKB

2010-11-27T08:45:00.002+01:00

In Nederland worden bedrijven van 10 tot 250 medewerkers tot de groep MKB gerekend. Dat zijn er in Nederland een slordige 800.000 waar we met 7,5 miljoen mensen ons brood verdienen . Samen vormen ze een belangrijke economische motor voor Nederland.

Ondernemers in het MKB worden gedreven vanuit mogelijkheden. Het vermogen om mogelijkheden op waarde te schatten en het lef om de eerste stap te zetten en de mogelijkheid aan te pakken zijn de kern van hun succes. Elke onderneming is op deze manier gestart en is er vervolgens achter gekomen dat het tijd werd om het werk anders te organiseren.

Aan Het Werk!

Medewerkers vragen steeds meer flexibiliteit in de invulling van hun werk, in goede samenhang met privé . De economie draait maar door, en 24/7 beschikbaar zijn is allang vanzelfsprekend, zeker in het internationaal zaken doen. Dit legt druk op organisaties, terwijl ook nog eens efficiënt en tegen de laagst mogelijke kosten gedaan moet worden. De kosten voor huisvesting zijn hoog, terwijl daar niet altijd op de meest efficiënte manier gebruik van wordt gemaakt. Medewerkers willen meer verantwoordelijkheid in de uitvoering van hun werkzaamheden, en willen hun tijd zelf invullen.

Thuiswerken of op een andere locatie werken wordt als erg prettig ervaren, onderzoek toont aan dat de productiviteit alleen maar toeneemt. Maar is de organisatie hierop wel voorbereid? Het is niet alleen een kwestie van een laptop met een dongle beschikbaar stellen, of elk ander middels zoals een smartphone.

Zaken zoals informatie, in welke vorm dan ook, beschikbaar kunnen hebben en delen wordt dan cruciaal. Dossiers kunnen zich niet meer in kasten bevinden, je neemt niet zomaar een dossier mee naar huis of onderweg. Samenwerken terwijl je niet meer op het werk bent, maar Aan Het Werk!, is niet alleen een kwestie van faciliteiten, maar zeker ook een kwestie van cultuur, beleid en organisatie. Werk je nog wel als je niet aanwezig bent? Hoe wordt je verantwoordelijk voor je eigen output als medewerker en hoe wordt je aangestuurd? Wat zijn de kaders waarin Het Nieuwe Werken door de werkgever wordt neergezet en hoe ga je met elkaar om?

Voor elke ondernemer komt het besef dat dingen anders doen tot een beter resultaat kan leiden. Er zijn verschillende aanleidingen die tot dit inzicht leiden.

• Reputatie
• Inspireren
• Duurzaamheid
• Verhuizing
• Fusie
• Meer doen met minder

De kleine opsomming is zeker niet compleet, maar in het licht van de afgelopen periode waarin de crisis een zware druk op veel ondernemingen heeft gelegd zal elke ondernemer zich de vraag hebben gesteld waar het in de organisatie beter kan.

Informatielogistiek

Informatielogistiek heeft zich hier op heeft toegelegd, de juiste informatie in de juiste vorm op het juiste moment presenteren aan de juiste persoon. Onontbeerlijk als je niet alle dagen op “de zaak”aanwezig bent maar toch je werk moet kunnen blijven doen. Efficiënter en productiever onafhankelijk van waar je bent en op welk tijdstip je die informatie nodig hebt.

Factor4Index

Vanuit deze visie kunnen organisaties worden ondersteund met scans en onderzoeken. Onderzoeken waarmee organisaties meer inzicht krijgen waarmee ze Aan Het Werk! kunnen. Het wat en het hoe, maar ook het helder krijgen waarom deze stappen tot een productievere organisatie leiden.
Factor4Index is een methodiek die het verbeterpotentieel van een organisatie in kaart brengt. Het geeft een organisatie een handvat, een start en een richting.

De methodiek kan grofweg opgedeeld worden in 2 krachtige stappen. Een set van 64 vragen meet zowel de huidige als de gewenste situatie. De vragen hebben betrekking op 4 categorieën:

Inspiratie
Organisatie
Cultuur
Technologie

De vragen worden via een online survey aan de medewerkers van een organisatie voorgelegd. Daarmee is deze stap snel en eenvoudig uit te voeren. Inmiddels hebben honderden organisaties deelgenomen en vormen daarmee een brede benchmark. Deze resultaten vormen een belanrijke input naar de volgende stap.
Nadat de resultaten van de survey zijn verwerkt volgt een interpretatie. Gecertificeerde organisaties zijn opgeleid om deze interpretatie uit te voeren en zodoende tot het juiste inzicht en een goed advies te komen.

De eenvoud waarmee de survey kan worden gestart en uitgevoerd maakt de methodiek geschikt voor een heel brede inzet in grote organisaties, maar juist ook voor een heel snelle en laagdrempelige tool voor bedrijven in het MKB.

Het helder krijgen van de verbeteringen die met de hoogste noodzaak moeten worden opgepakt en de grootste impact hebben op het verbeteren van de productiviteit van een organisatie is één. Het doorvoeren en succesvol begeleiden van een verandering is een logisch vervolg.

SPIL

De Standaard Aanpak Informatie Logistiek (SPIL) is een beproefde methodiek die naast het ontwikkelen van een inzicht in de informatielogistieke verbeteringen, de concrete implementatie begeleid en het bereiken van de beoogde resultaten versneld.

SPIL omvat een set van scans, tools en bestpractices en is voor organisaties van elke omvang toepasbaar.

Toevoeging 13 januari 2011: Whitepaper over Het Nieuwe Werken - Aan Het Werk, met Het Nieuwe Werken in het MKB

The future of productivity - changing the game with Office 365

2010-11-01T11:00:00.004+01:00

***

Microsoft Office 365 brings together cloud versions of our most trusted communications and collaboration products with the latest version of our desktop suite for businesses of all sizes.

***

A new name of the (same) game
After Microsoft unveiled the new name of their online suit during a webcast Oct 19th, formerly known as BPOS (and later codename UNION), they launched their dedicated site about Office 365. Bringing together cloud versions of our most trusted communication and collaboration products, so what is available in this box?

Introduction of a revolution?
Betsy Frost Webb - who hosted the webcast where the new suite was unveiled, calls the introduction of Office 365 a game changer for all kinds of businesses all over the world.

I intend to believe it will shape the future of productivity. All functionality in this box is available today, but it is the way it is delivered that will make the difference. In an earlier blog about the future of productivity in small and medium businesses I mentioned that the only concern of the entrepreneur is spotting opportunities and turn them into succesfull business. The way most ICT is delivered to these businesses have proved themselfs to be quit complex to implement. These efforts are killing for productivity (a measure of output from a production process, per unit of input). Functionality from flagship products like SharePoint 2010 and Exchange 2010 are way too big because of this complexity for the small businesses.
If you can manage to take away the complexity of implementation and provide the right fit functionality right away, business can be productive from the start. That's exacly what Office 365 promises.

Technique without the technology
Organisations are looking for an 'easy' way to use technology to get more insight in their business. If you sell cookies, you want to know how much sugar and weat is needed for your next production batch. Selling cookies is not about technique, but a lot about technology to make it possible. It is not about backing a lot of cookies, but the right cookies considering production resources, market and taste.

You will be interessted in the developments of the prices of sugar and weat, the influences of the weather and European laws. To discusse this you want to be able to capture this information and to discusse these with your team, your suppliers and transform that information, share that knowledge within your organisation. In the end your success depends on the right information to make the right choices based on real knowledge.

If your business is helping other organisations to succeed, you do not need a productionline. You do have the need to capture the knowledge in your organisation, even if the organisation is just you. You do have the need to have insight in your business, who are my customers? What is happening in the marketplace? How can I get in contact, provide my customer with the right information, create a platform to share information with a partner and so on and so on.
Likely you are an expert in your field, more likely you are not an IT professional, do not know and do not want to know about networks, servers, mailprotocolls and security settings. The technology though is essential to your business.

"Office 365 is more than a new brand. It’s a progressive approach to cloud applications,” said Kurt DelBene (succesor of Stephen Elop), president of the Microsoft Office Division. “We designed Office 365 to work for a business of one – or a business of one million and one.”

"To date, only the largest businesses have been able to take advantage of modern, enterprise-caliber IT solutions. Office 365 changes that."

The Cloud? Are you serious?
If you question the intentions of Microsoft in getting this right check out my earlier blog on Cloud. Chris Caposella describes it as follows:

“Chapter one in Microsoft’s history was about putting a PC on every desktop. Chapter two was dedicated to transforming the enterprise data center. Chapter three is, without a question, devoted to bringing the power of the cloud to our customers and partners."

So what is in the box?
Key benefits for Office 365:

• Access to e-mail, documents, contacts, and calendars on nearly any device
• Simple and secure collaboration with colleagues and business partners
• Works seamlessly with Microsoft Office and the other programs people use today
• Business-class features including IT-level phone support, financially-backed 99.9% uptime, geo-redundancy, disaster recovery, and robust security and privacy controls and standards
• Comprehensive solutions including desktop productivity applications, portals, extranets, external Web site, instant messaging, voice and video conferencing, Web conferencing, e-mail, voice mail and unified messaging
• Pay-as-you-go pricing options which provide predictability and flexibility for all or part of an organization

Basic 'backbone' functionalities are mainly deliverd by three core platforms working together:

Exchange Online

Cloud-based e-mail, calendar and contacts with the most current antivirus and anti-spam solutions. Includes the ability to get e-mail on virtually any mobile phone and options for voice mail, unified messaging and archiving

SharePoint Online

Cloud-based service for creating sites to connect colleagues, partners and customers. Includes enterprise social networking and customization options.

Lync* Online

Cloud-based instant messaging, presence, and online meeting experiences with screen sharing and voice and video conferencing

Besides these well known components Microsoft Office itself is a major addition to the functionality.

The world’s leading productivity tool on the desktop (Office Professional Plus) and on the Web (Office Web Apps) now seamlessly connected and delivered with cloud services – for the best productivity experience across the PC, Phone and Browser.

(*NOTE: Lync is the Unified Communications (UC) platform, formely known as Office Communication Server (OCS) and the Live communications functionality)

All these platforms are build to work together seamslessly. Functions are made available to almost every device from the cloud (three screens and a cloud).
On the technology part a lot more has changed. Partners are given the opportunity to add value to the platforms as they are when implementing on the customers location. Developing value add customer components will enrich the platform functionality dramatically.

Changing the game not only the name
Microsoft promisses these developments will change the game. Delivering the technology through services to all businesses realy is a change. To date implementing a enterprise business productivity platform was not a walk in the park for even big organisations. Now the infrastructure itself can be made available as simple as 1,2,3.
Business productivity is NOT about technology as I mentioned before. Having the right information and documents available to be able to make the right descision is more about information strategy. The larger your organisation, the more difficult the implementation or change of this strategy will be. This is why I am possitive about the changes in this game.
Smaller organisations will have the opportunity to setup needed infrastructure and are more flexible to use the power available instantly. The larger organisations will be able to choose for more business focus deminishing the burden of technology, knowing exactly what it will cost the organisation.

The Future of Productivity - the sweetspot of eReaders and Business Solutions #li #il #yam

2010-10-30T09:00:00.002+02:00

The worlThis post was published before july 2010. The information in this post was asked to take offline until now to make sure that Ricoh Innovations had room to wrap up the release of their first production version.

This year Microsoft World Partner Conference me and my collegue had the opportunity to meet Ron Barr of Ricoh Innovations. Our goal was to get to know each other since we are collegues in the Ricoh family and share some developments and ideas. Ron had this prototype with him of a Ricoh eReader. The device has a WIFI and 3G connection, the surface is based on the kindle technology on top of that a pen interface is implemented. Writing on the surface realy feels like wrinting on paper. Not to smooth, and a lot like writing with ink on paper.
Ron informed us that this was the first time he was able to show a prototype of Ricoh so upfront and I´m really glad we experienced the tablet. Some things are changing. As Steve Balmer announced several times now, The Cloud demands smarter devices and Microsoft COO Kevin Turner mentioned a sweet spot in their ´three screens and a cloud´ vision on the future of productivity during his WPCDC speech. An open space between the consumer focused space of the apple iPad and the fat desktop devices on the other end. Actualy he positioned the Kindle on the the far right end of the spectrum, but that is the kindle static ´read only´ interface. Well this Ricoh device rocks, it is able to go beyond the crisp display of books and is able to deliver support to business processes. The layer on top of the Kindle infterface is able to capture writen input and will integrate that interaction with business processess.
There will be a SDK available. We think it should be free of charge. The community will take care of the huge opportunity. We discussed the need in logistic processes and other paper and information appended processes. The possibilities are infinited. How should we price the product itself. Well in our opinion the added value of the product is not the issue, it´s the huge added value of the process behind that. Maybe free of charge is not the way to go, but look at the US eReader forecast and the prediction the prices of a stripped down device will drop to less than $50.

The device will launch in the US april 2011. We in the front line of Europe will try to support the device as soon as possible.

Pay with a tweet

2010-10-28T11:53:00.000+02:00

Stumbled upon a way to promote products whitepapers and so on wih pay with a tweet. Worthwhile exploring and sharing.

Try the concept by downloading the whitepaper on Information Logistics

The Cloud? It is truly amzing!

2010-10-26T18:33:00.000+02:00

During a cloud event mid march 2010 organised by ICT~Office in Utrecht, Gartner analyst and VP Jeffery Mann unveiled his view on the battle field of the Cloud. Cloud computing in his opinion will be dominated by just a few big players. During this event only a few suspects where present: Google NL(Erik de Muinck Keizer) Microsoft NL(Peter de Haas) and Jeffery Mann from Gartner to give his opinion.

In the presentation of his analyses Mann predicts that a few big enterprise players are going to dominate the cloud vendor market: IBM, Cisco, Google and Microsoft. Google is the young cowboy, they are trying hard and doing OK, but have some trouble getting there.

Google
Back then it was Security. 'China gate' dominated the news and Google tried to downplay the issue. Now mid October 2010 a new issue arrose about collecting WIFI data during taking pictures for Google streetview, again a big failure.

Google has "no plans" to resume the collection of WiFi network data via its world-roving Street View cars, according to a report by Canada's privacy commissioner reprimanding the web giant for collecting WiFi payload data as well as network info.

"Google still intends to offer location-based services, but does not intend to resume collection of WiFi data through its Street View cars," the report said. "Collection is discontinued and Google has no plans to resume it."

IBM

In the last month I visited and studied the vision of IBM on their market and cloud in particular. IBM is a wonderfull technology company. They do understand what technology is comming, what technologyis needed... But cloud is NOT about technology! It is about technique withhout the technology, predictable services for predictable cost.

Mann thinks IBM will play a important roll as a technology leader in the future, but have no clear vision on cloud.

Microsoft
The best bet on Cloud leadership is Microsoft according Mann.

Seven Month Later...
Now October 2010, seven month later Microsoft launched their 4th evolution of SharePoint as part of their WAVE14 releases May this year. Just Five month later Microsoft launched the beta of Office365, the online suite, in 13 countries.

I never experienced such a rapid addoption of a new platform as with SharePoint 2010. Now just a few month later end users demand solutions based on this new version. Today just one week after the beta release of Office365 customers are asking for solutions based on the new generation of the online suite, even though it isn't released in The Netherlands yet as beta!

In their analysis presented in the "Cloud Computing: Changing the Vendor Landscape" presentation, two other Gartner analysts (David Cearley and David Mitchell Smith) predict that two vendors will be perceived as both leaders in cloud computing as in enterprise computing. That's a lot of market for two leaders!

Again Microsoft is part of this analysis and together with VMware, Microsoft is one of the two future leaders according to these analysts. In this analysis Gartner is looking for future leaders in this combined area of Cloud and Enterprise computing. Candidates are typically origine from one of these domains.

Overall, Crearly and Smith say only Microsoft and VMware have full lines, although their offerings are very different from each other.

Smith said Microsoft's choices were "insanely complex" as it offered all sorts of products in all sorts of ways. It is an enabler of cloud services within companies, a provider of its own services, and also sells services through third parties. It has products for both public and private clouds, and it offers lots of SaaS applications (some hosted, some really cloud-based, and some moving in the cloud direction), and its Azure products, which offer a hybrid of infrastructure and platform as a service.

Microsoft has "one of the most visionary and complete views of the cloud," Cearley said. In some respects, he said, in a few years, you may think of their enterprise offerings as private versions of their cloud offerings. On the other side, he said, many of the specific offerings aren't fully mature yet. But Smith noted that software moves faster on the cloud.

That last sentence is what seems to happen at this moment. Even before changes are there or mature they seem to be addopted. It is truly amazing.

Collaborating on content delivery and production

2010-10-26T10:33:00.001+02:00

I stumbled upon a article by Kyle Studstill titled the future of content delivery and production published on PSKF. Thinking about future developments of content and the opportunities for new business models keeps me busy. The article focusses on the production and delivery of movies and the way Edward Burns is experimenting with new mediums like iTunes since the release of Purple Violets in 2007.

What cought me in this article was the way Burns experienced the opportunity's ahead.

Below are some key notes from the discussion on the future of content delivery and production, wich I copied from the article of Kyle.

When experimenting with these new models, you can’t immediately expect a home run just because you’re being innovative. The wins will be small hits, from which producers will learn what works and what doesn’t.

Indeed it will take some time and experiments to figure out what works. It looks like Burns is a believer and uses some kind of a mashup approache. The platform provided by the channel iTunes is a first step to figure out how the market on the other end of the channel looks like.

By distributing content on more fragmented channels, you can worry less about press and marketing concerns influencing the creative integrity of the film – you can just produce the content and let it find its own market.

I do not know about this one. Yes when posting a BLOG or a tweet the channel provides a mean to the message to find it's own audience. But when you take the concerns about press and marketing influencing the creative integrity of the film, can you worry less on these issues when distributing content on a more fragmented channel?

Digital distribution is indeed changing the filmmaking landscape, but it’s important to remember that big-budget productions are still going to have a place in traditional channels – it’s always going to be fun to watch a new film with 200 other people in a theatre.

Digital distribution is a mean to reach out to other markets, effecting the traditional market of film theatres. In this context it adds speed and ease to the digital distribution through the video tape and later carriers like DVD.

Platforms that allow for episode-by-episode releases open the opportunity for innovation in the way the story is put together; there’s the potential to allow the audience to impact the way future episodes unfold.

This remark cought my attention. Indeed in my belief using the possibility to collaborate on producing content (movies as well as music or documents) can add enormous vallue to the end product. The digital channel provides the needed reach and speed to make interaction possible. These talkback fases have some interesting effects. The story develops toghether with the audience. Every part as well as the end product is very unpredictable at the start.

By splitting up larger works that would normally exist as one film into smaller episodes, producers can now explore freemium revenue models where the first parts of of production are free, charging for future episodes further down the line.

Besides of the more creative approache of the former item this one is the money machine which could safe the movie industrie. Binding together the techniek to interact and collaborate and a creative revenue model is a start to earn money early in the production process. Even financing a production from the very start with a open model is one of the possibilities. The production of the film will make it to it's collaborative end product in a way the audience likes or won't make it at all.

BPOS became 'UNION' becomes Office365

2010-10-23T11:30:00.000+02:00

Oct 19th 2010 Microsoft Unveiled the new name of their Microsoft Online proposition formely known as BPOS and codename 'UNION'. The new Name of the suite is Office365 and since the announcement a lot of content came available. Content about features, prices, markets, beta availability and roadmaps beyond.

Roadmap
The Beta came available for 13 countries/regions. These countries/regions include: Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States. The Netherlands is not amoung the lucky ones, looking at the roadmap I think a safe bet is that it will be general available within 6 mounths.

Notice that the existing customers (BPOS) will have to wait a little longer until transitions of services are available.

Do you feel lucky?
Notice that the existing customers (BPOS) will have to wait a little longer until transitions of services are available. So are those new customers lucky or why are existing customers sorry they have to wait a little longer?

Microsoft explains these questions as follows:

Q: Is Office 365 still BPOS?
A: Office 365 is the introduction of new online services and capabilities, new user experiences, and new online platform capabilities related to the introduction of new underlying “2010” server software into Microsoft Online Services datacenters as well as other major new service and platform investments. The name may be new and includes new offerings, but you are subscribed to the same service – just significantly enhanced. It will just give you a lot more features and functionality once you make the transition.

Q: I am not on BPOS now. Should I wait for Office 365?
A: The benefits of Microsoft Online Services are realized as soon as services are deployed, whether on BPOS or Office 365. Customers who do decide to purchase BPOS now should deploy BPOS with the new system requirements to make the transition experience as smooth as possible.

So Microsoft explains that Office365 differs from BPOS and that all these benefits will be deployed when available. Even when you feel like going online, do it now, no need to wait...

I have no experience with the transition from BPOS to Office365, besides a few from Microsoft nobody has. Still I wonder if this is entirely thrue. There are some ´system requirements`?!?! and Microsoft has a Transition Checklist that looks quite straight forward.

The biggest defects of BPOS may be the biggest guarantee to successful transition.

BPOS ´defects´
BPOS is a productivity suite. In this package of functionality SharePoint plays a major role as it does in the on premise based functionality stack. In this package SharePoint online is based on the 2007 version also called MOSS. The biggest complaint from customers and even more the Microsoft Partner is that there are very limited options for customization available. The gap between the feature set available in the online version and MOSS2007 is huge.

Since the SharePoint2010 release last may became general available the differences between the two versions, made the demand to the release of BPOSv2 even bigger. SharePoint2010 is the 4th evolution of the platform. It's much more mature, but in relationship with SharePoint Online, it is developed with Online deployment as a starting point!

Since the MOSS2007 was not, Microsoft had a lot of problems deploying BPOS in a shared cloud environment (multi-tenant). So what is the effect of this mindshift to the cloud?

Office365
Office365 looks promising in this area. A lot not all features are available or are expected to become available shortly in the SharePoint Online version.

The feature set available to the end-user became very rich. Nice integration with the Office Webapps, full fidelity across devices, real WIKI everywhere and so on and on. Again more important is that the Microsoft Partner finally will be able to deploy their added value solutions on top of the platform.

The starting point to develop the platform with a multi-tenant cloud for the SharePoint2010 platform (and all other 'members' of WAVE14) changed the way resources are are used and managed. Simply said, a buggy application of one company cannot hurt another, not even when they are deployed in the same infrastructure.

Management capabilities are also available to administrators in SharePoint2010 Online. This 'feature' was just very limited available to the Microsoft Partner in BPOS.

BPOS became 'UNION' becomes ? -

2010-10-18T20:47:00.000+02:00

During a webcast Microsoft Office Division will announce changes a lot of partners are waiting for a while now. My biggest disapointment during my visit to Microsoft World Partner Conference in Washington last summer was the lack of information in the area of BPOS or codename UNION.
My expectation was that the new name, functionality and more important the release dates would 've been unveiled during this biggest partner event of the Softies. Well the anouncement is there:

Announcement From Microsoft Office Division
Oct. 18, 2010

Microsoft Corp. will announce news from its Office Division, live from San Francisco via webcast, on Oct. 19 from 8 to 8:30 a.m. PDT. Check back here to watch the webcast live!

I do hope they will meet up the expectations.

Communicatie boeit toch niet! - Retail - #esmr

2010-10-16T10:41:00.000+02:00

Boeien en Binden met Enterprise Social Media in de retail

'De uitdaging is hen te boeien en te binden. ‘Betrokkenheid is een grote uitdaging binnen onze organisatie. En de synergie tussen mensen van verschillende filialen en verschillende afdelingen kan beter.’

Een uitspraak van een retailer tijdens een rondetafel gesprek bij Microsoft Nederland over het gebruik van Enterprise Social Media in de retail branche.

Boeien! met communiceren
Voor retailers speelt het thema boeien vanuit een aantal invalshoeken.

De medewerker karakteristieken van een retailer zijn eenvoudig herkenbaar als je rondloopt door de HEMA, C&A, de Bijenkorf, de Blokker of bij V&D.

Veel dames, vaak van middelbare leeftijd bemannen de vloer. Zowat allemaal werken ze parttime. Dit is overigens ook het gevolg van het feit dat een retailer over elke week zo'n 50 uur open zijn voor publiek. Neem daarbij het uurtje voor de openingtijd waarin de winkel klaargemaakt moet worden en je begrijpt dat een 40 uurige werkweek niet goed past. Dit betekent dat personeel flexibel inzetbaar moet zijn en dat daar dus ook beleid op gevoerd wordt. Boeien en binden wordt dan een vak appart.

Het versturen van een memo in een brief vanaf het hoofdkantoor of de vestiging dekt een deel van de 'communicatie' af. Echt veel ruimte voor communicatie en interactie geeft dat echter niet.

De maandelijkse nieuwsbrief geeft personeel een platform om haar meer informele informatie en interesses uit te wisselen. Welliswaar heeft een nieuwsbrief vaak het doel om ook het geluid van de medewerkers te laten horen, interactief is het echter niet.

...en als het dan fout gaat?
Beide vormen van communicatie missen buiten interactie ook snelheid. Snelheid die beperkt wordt door enerzijds het medium maar ook zeker de gestructureerde organisatie die daarvoor is gekozen. Dit wordt helder als de zaak onder druk komt te staan.
De retail branche is in de afgelopen jaren nogal in beweging geweest, fusies, overnames en durfinvesteerders hebben management en medewekers nogal eens tegenover elkaar geplaatst. Daar waar de 'gangfax' rules in een kantoor, neemt de vrouwelijke medewerker van middelbare leeftijd het communicatiemiddel ter hand waarmee zij met haar vriendinnen in contact blijft - Hyves.
De koetjes en kalfjes die eerst onderwerp van gesprek waren veranderen in onderwerpen waarin serieuze zorg over de ontwikkelingen op het werk worden uitgesproken. Een kettingreactie van bijval, commentaar en discussies tot gevolg hebbende. Het sociale netwerk doet haar werk...
Er onstaan fora waarin op serieuze wijze collectieve meningen worden ontwikkeld. Bedrijf en management worden totaal verrast en erger, zijn niet betrokken in het geprek. 0-1.

Communicatie, maar dan anders!
Belang van communicatie die aanslaat, betrokkenheid in het gesprek, draagvlak. Het zijn redenen die de revue passeren als je nagaat waarom retailers nadenken over nut en onnut van social media. Bovenstaand voorbeeld geeft daarbij al aan dat betrokkenheid in het geprek een eerste vereiste is en dat eerder genoemde snelheid en interactie andere elementen zijn die van belang zijn. Opdracht tot onderzoek van de mogelijkheden komen vanuit bedrijfsleiding enerzijds en ondernemingsraden anderzijds. Engagement van het bedrijf bij de discussie blijkt een gezamenlijk belang te zijn.

Van Boeien naar Binden
Het medium wat gekozen is door de medewerkers zelf blijkt van een oncontroleerbare kruiwagen met kikkers verworden tot een kans om de communicatie van beleid vanuit het management en betrokkenheid bij vorming van mening vanuit het personeel bij elkaar te brengen.
Goede inzet zo is de overtuiging van deelnemers aan deze discussies kan zelfs helpen met een positieve bijdragen om het gevoel van eenheid, de uitwisseling van kennis te ondersteunen. Naast betrokkenheid, snelheid en interactie horen hier nog een tweetal andere elementen aan toegevoegd te worden, transparantie en vertrouwen. Helderheid wie communiceert en met welk doel, respect voor ieders mening vormen deze basis. Niet enkel in het klassieke communicatie proces, maar ook dubbel en dwars in sociale media.

Daamee wordt boeien binden.

The Cloud? Are you serious?

2010-10-09T10:37:00.000+02:00

Microsoft is claiming to be a very seriouse player in The Cloud Business. The latest campaign with a kickof at the Washington University by Steve Balmer is called 'We are all in'. So what is the status and where are they going?

Microsoft is well known by most people. Most of the people ever using a PC since about 1980 is a customer (paying or not) of this company. Most company's are using one or more software products of Microsoft. Over 6 million copy's of their most famous product Microsoft Office sold.

The world is changing

The way Microsoft is delivering their software to the users is changing. They do not actualy delivering software, but aiming to deliver services. Office delivered this way is called Office Web Apps. If you question the strategic move to The Cloud check out the succes: in the first 100 days it went live, Microsoft picked up 20 million users for Office Web Apps.

More changes

Another BIG online area of Microsoft is productivity - 'Business Productivity Online Service' or short BPOS. BPOS encompasses products like Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communication Server (OCS) and Forefront. Microsoft is preparing to move into the Wave 14 with BPOS (now called codename Union). Exchange and SharePoint will move to the 2010 version, OCS and Live meeting are becomming Linc and the Office Web Apps are added to the offering.
SharePoint 2010 is the 4th evolution of the product (products like Office are in their 10th or so) and is becoming very mature. Since the focus on online Microsoft decided to design and develop all of their products with The Cloud in mind.

Microsoft is expected to unveil more about the new name and changes in the new version Oktober 19th.

These changes are even more interessting for Microsoft partners because they will be able to add their added value solutions on top of the platforms and ship the total solution. Expectations are very high.

Are you serious?

So IS Microsoft serious? The focus on the online business is succesfull. BPOS has seen 3x growth this year, with now over 40 million paid seats. These seats are comprised of smaller businesses and many large enterprises. Well that's serious business.

Also Microsoft recognizes the importance of differentiation in the markets. Live@edu is The Cloud offering based on BPOS targetting the Educational market, BPOS Federal is aiming on the US governmental market. BPOS Federal is told to be more secure.

Are you secure?

To be able to claim this more secure environment Microsoft has added up the suite with a set of industry standards:

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001
Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) 70 Type I and Type II
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
Title 21 CFR Part 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations
Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2
Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) compliance

If one desides to invest in such list of industry standard compliancy's this means they are pretty serious about their goal. BPOS Federal is available for US only. The list of additional industry standards apply to the normal BPOS offering.

After five million years of evolution, is it possible that the future of humanity is humanity itself?

2010-10-09T09:01:00.000+02:00

“Since the dawn of time, humanity’s long journey has led us to countless discoveries,” “Yet with each leap forward for civilisation, more people have been left behind. But our quest has taken us to a completely new horizon.”

“History is about to be rewritten. This time human beings will be at the centre -- and the machines will be the ones that adapt. After five million years of evolution, is it possible that the future of humanity is humanity itself?”

These sentences where used on the E3 while introducing the Kinnect last June in LA. For those who do not know what Kinnect is: This product is the result of Project Natal, which aim is (was) a project that introduces full-body motion-sensitive controller. In other words: the controller is YOU.

The game industry is serious business estimated $48 Billion today, but potentially growing massively. When adopted by a large group not using games today because of the trouble of a controller as we know it today.

When I witnessed the Kinnect during the Microsoft WPC10 in Washinton DC I started thinking about the application of this technology in other areas.

How will the eXperience of a hotel guest change, when he is guided through the services available when entering the room for the first time. 'Real' interaction with a personal host, recognising YOU. Will a natural interactive interface change the way we will search for information, connect to our peers and share our knowledge? How will presentation of information change when we use this interactive interface browsing through the information sources. Remember the minority report, is the future now?

Me myself believe that this development will lead to a whole new way of using technology in daily life and business solutions.

The Cloud demands smarter devices - looking for the sweetspot - ereader format on a laptop screen

2010-10-01T21:55:00.000+02:00

When I returned from the Microsoft World Partner Conference wrote a blog which will be republished in a short while. Subject of the blog is the eReader sweetspot. Microsoft has this vision - three screens and a cloud. Steve Balmer mentioned the importance of these different devices but even more the importance of smart devices - The Cloud demands smarter devices. Microsoft COO Kevin Turner beliefs there is a sweet spot in the huge amound of screen devices.

The eReader is such device. I came across this blog by Julie Bort - Toshiba sells ebooks while Amazone puts Kindle in a browser. Wednesday, September 29, 2010

I do like the eReader for just the goal it is meant for. Read a book. It has to have the experience of a book. The Kindle screen technology gives the reader just that experience - except the smell of ink and paper.

With Kindle for the Web, bloggers and website owners can embed a book preview into their sites (a function Google Books has offered for a year). They'll earn referral fees from Amazon when customers take the bait and buy the full version for their Kindles. Kindle for the Web will include many a feature from the e-reader. Users can change the font size and line spacing, adjust the background color. And of course, they can help promote the book -- sharing it via Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail.
This part I do understand. Put a small example of the full product for free to lure a customer.

Toshiba has decided it's not to be outdone by the likes of Kindle, or of the bulging tablet market, e-readers all, or even by the new e-readers and bookstores planned by rival Sharp. On Tuesday, Toshiba launched its own e-book store, Book Place, and is offering a free Windows e-reader to all comers, available for XP, Vista or Windows 7.

Oké... It can be easy to have another device to read an ereader format book like say your laptop. Still the success of the eReader is the fact it reads like a book. A laptop does not. Not even close in my opinion. The strategy is ofcourse to make the ereader format available for everyone, even those people that do not have the device. That's smart for the business of those books.
However I do not understand the folks reacting on this article. Why should I buy an other device to read the book? In my opinion because you want to read a book and that's just the experience an ereader device will provide.

So what is smart about the device? And what about the sweetspot? I will explain in the blog article I mentioned, but picture the 'old world situation'. Paper was the most important infomation carier. I can assure you it still is in a lot of situations.
For example the forms needed to report tasks fullfilled by an engineer that need to be signed by the customer, freight documents etc. True, DHL uses those handy devices where you can sign for the delivered goods. It took the paper out of the proces, but a lot of information too.
Picture this eReader device and the forms that carry the information of the business proces and the same experience of the paper forms... That's a smarter device.

Meet IBM 2010 - Effectiveness and Efficiency

2010-09-15T13:05:00.001+02:00

Breakout session: Efficiency and Effectiveness

Jan van der Sypt BPM specialist IBM

Despite the proven benefit and value, BPM projects tend to be very costly and take much too long. The promised ROI evaporates before any result is obtained. Although typically there are many good intentions to collaborate, the failure to transpose business requirements to a technology implementation is driven by the difficult communication between line of business people and the technology people. A BPM project requires the business to be in the driving seat, and any requirements need to be shared without losing any detail with the implementation teams. What is needed is a platform that will simplify the BPM approach to facilitate business people to provide the needed input, that will enhance collaboration between all parties involved, and that will shorten the cycles between new or changing requirements. This is what WebSphere Lombardi edition has to offer: a complete BPM solution that is covering the whole lifecycle, from modelling to optimization and monitoring, with one single product. All the different oles inside an organization will find a way to make their work smarter using this platform.

Product or Business Proces?

The session is very product focused. I realize that this conference is very customer focused, where a lot of conferences and sessions which I attend from Microsoft are much more partner focused. Well they are people focussed as I mentioned earlier, but that is translated into User eXperience. The presenter tries to adress the business needs, but very poor.

He misses the point in my opinion. The results of a effective & efficient BPM project is NOT depended of the supporting tool. He mentioned the business is crusial, but still presented a tool focused presentation.

The Themes
Themes mentioned are indeed very important to take in consideration and base of a well designed business supporting proces:

simplicity
engagement
repeatability

Well I do not know if simplicity is the right word. Business and Technology should have a common language to discusse requirements, changes to these demands to ensure the result ìs the implementation of the solution both agreed on. That is NOT simple.

Engagement is indeed a crusial element to ensure success and effectiveness of the end results. In perception of the business it becomes their system.

Repeatability should help to become more efficient, but there is more than just an object in a tool. Best practices in how organisations can be helped to analyse the business problem and what sort of solution helped simular organisations before. It is not as suggested repeatability on the level of the tool itself.

Meet IBM 2010 - See IT differently

2010-09-15T13:04:00.002+02:00

Remember
It's a strange feeling. It has been a few years since I attended a IBM business / technology conference. Nowadays I attend mostly to sessions about the same subjects seen in the perspective of Microsoft technology. When I came across this event and checked out the program I became interested.

Today there are not a lot of familiar faces, but interesting subjects. Time to look at the same subjects that interest me everyday, but from another perspective and also with another market aproach.

Host of the day Roelof Hemmen.

A vision - smarter planet
Core in the IBM vision is Smarter Systems in a Smarter World. The world is getting instrumented, interconnected and more intelligent. Kees Donker opens the event with his vision on the changing and more demanding world. He just scratched the surface of the trends where technology is used to support change, connect different fields in the communities to become more smart. IBM is using a more technology driven approach. (Microsoft is more People focused, but also uses the work smarter concept in essence).

Kees Donker is asked by Roelof Hemmen a few times when the developments described by IBM will be practically adopted and used by real people. The answer was not given, no timeline, no roadmap. Well I do support the idea that things has to change in this world. I do think lot's of technology can implement the technology to fullfill a lot of needs. Still I wished IBM had the nerve to make a good guess of what is happening when.

Also the examples are just mentioned. A trafic information system, a system at the Schiphol that processes the luguage more effective and efficient. These examples are more than just an experiment, they DO mean something to efficiency. The Smarter System is heavily supported by technology. Technology developed by IBM. The barcode, an idea of B. Silver first adopted by IBM is now evolved in RFID (IBM is one of the driving forces, making the technology affordable). This is typicaly a strong element of this company, pitty they do not magnify these investments and the measurable effect on our everyday experiences.

The vision Instrumented, interconnected and more intelligence are translated in the more practical themes:

Insight & Action
Efficiency and Effectiveness
Managing risk
Empower people
Agile organization

These themes are the structure around the subjects of the breakout sessions during the event.

Today I try to capture the simularities and the differences in the perspectives of these to companies in the fields insight, collaboration, contentmanagement etc

The Future of Productivity - Small and Medium Business #li #il

2010-08-04T14:01:00.001+02:00

Entrepreneurs in the area of Small and Medium Business are constantly looking for opportunities. There is no room for long lasting research and development projects. Invested money has to return to the business as soon as possible. Still a lot of innovations are rooted in Small and Medium-sized enterprises.
A lot of these companies where run by hand till during the 80's the bigger enterprises developed the competence to build their own information systems. It took a long time to figure out how to capture the business information logistics into these systems. The information and communication technology industry realized the processes where structured a lot alike and developed the BIG configurable enterprise systems. Business grew huge.
We still remember the problems that came with it. Implementing these systems was not a walk in the park. It took some time till less complex systems where introduced and implementation of these systems could fit the needs of the small-sized enterprise.
Meanwhile other systems where developed. They targeted specialized information processes like finance, or less structured objects as 'the market' or 'the customer' instead of the amount of products in the warehouse. It is not easy to capture information about these more organic processes and objects. Tasks to manage this area are carried out by a team and rarely at the same time.
The support of the information logistics needed has changed. The 'C' in the ICT of the 80's has to support Communication as well as Collaboration. Information is less structured, we call it Content and the information worker has to be able to Create it. The co-worker has to be able to access this Content, when needed at a location of choice, preferable with a device of choice cross the platform.
These developments are particularly evident in the large companies, but are these also adopted in the medium-sized enterprises? Has the economic crisis supported adoption and are Small and Medium-sized Businesses prepared to change their way of work? If the 'I' in ICT became less structured and the 'C' in ICT has changed, what happened to the 'T'?

T is still Technology

Technology is complex or is it? Well when building an information system, you need technology to create, store and access the information. You build this technology on a stack starting at the bottom - electric wires and iron. When we reach the top of the stack we discover the application that provides us with the functionality needed to implement the technology into our businesses in order to boost productivity.
Recent developments are showing that the underlying technology is becoming less important to explain. These developments are compared a lot with the development of electricity power stations. In the beginning the large companies build their own power station, which was then deployed more efficiently by sharing the central. The same development is going on within the ICT industry. Data centers are shared. It becomes less important to deploy and manage the tactical cost center and is becoming an utility.
These developments are bare technology, still no productivity in the sence of creating and sharing content. When we take a look at the top of the technology stack where the functionality is provided, a broad set of platforms become visible attempting to get you choose for the product. It would take too long to deal with all the available platforms and products. I will try to explain two sites and some of the developments of the productivity platform. I choose in this case for the products and aproach of Microsoft, because in my experience they provide the most complete vision and set of products to fullfill the need:

• Server site
• Client site

Productivity server platform

Last Fisical Year of Microsoft was a year full of new releases in the server system area. A small but not exhaustive list encompasses:

• Windows server 2008 R2
• SQL server 2008 R2
• SharePoint Server 2010
• Exchange Server 2010

Soon to be released is the product Office Communication Server (OCS) 2010. These products are part of the classic on premise server products of Microsoft. Again it would take too far to explain all changes here but I will try to explain some of the changes most important to the set of functionalities that implement productivity.
The server products form an application infrastructure that implement a broad set of functionality. SharePoint uses SQL server as an underlying database infrastructure. SharePoint hosts sites that support team collaboration. Content can be created within a BLOG. A BLOG is a way to write an article like I am doing right now. If you like the content you can react to it, link to this BLOG, create a feed so new articles show up in your outlook. New functionality in SharePoint is that you can very quickly react by push a button 'I Like' and rate an article. This will affect the relevance of an article when searched. Besides of the supported enterprise tagging system, users have the possibility to add their own index. This again influences your interests and eventually the relevance and search results of your most close contacts. These mechanisms also apply to documents. These are also stored in the content databases hosted on the SQL platform. By implementing your organizational structure into a directory structure (DNS) and using groups a relational network is established. This structure is used as a base to 'calculate' the relationship with coworkers or social distance. This together with the former discussed mechanism provides a base for building a user centric knowledge driven productivity system. This system is self-providing when used.

In combination with OCS the platform is promoted to a communication system, which helps the user to choose the most effective way to contact someone and share information or collaborate. Presence will show the best fit or will take you to the best next candidate to ask your question and get your job done. This presence is available within all information objects, so lists, documents, emails, chat sessions etc.

Imagine now these information and collaboration is about a development and sales process, supporting the meetings needed to analyze the requirements, develop the product and services, the release of a quote and the preparation of a contract. For the right customer information the CRM system is leading and integrated as well as the information needed for the product information. These kinds of processes can take a whole lot of conversation, meetings a lot of paper exchange. Supported by a platform that support online meetings and presentations, exchange of the documents under version control within a project collaboration environment can take care of a lot of coordination en will speed up high quality collaboration and team productivity.

Productivity client products

This one is relatively easy and familiar for the most of the companies. Microsoft has a broad set of distinct applications in the office suite on top of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Well there are a lot of developments in this area. The functionality in the last two versions has become very rich. Especially the Office 2010 developments are very much focused on productivity.

Most famous of course are the products Word, Excel and Outlook in this suite, but there is a lot more. In the combination with the server functionality the real power is unveiled. The new meaning of 'C' in ICT is provided by these applications. Outlook for instance supports the information worker with an aggregated view on all communication and shared activities with coworkers. Even information sources from outside the limits of the company can be used to unify the insight accessed by this view.

When trying to contact the content owner for more information the system has the capability to help you choose the most appropriate to get in touch. Even if this colleagues is not available who will most likely be the best to contact instead. Sounds like the future of productivity? Well no this future is now!

So where is the utility part of this client side solution? Can I have this functionality without the burden of technology? Yes you can! Since last Office release these products are available as web products. No need to install these on your laptop or desktop computer. Much but not all functionality is available by accessing the application with a browser. It is of virtual no importance where or when you attempt to access the information, even not with a smartphone or a Macintosh computer the application is available. You can contact and collaborate with colleagues or coworkers from outside your company with a total freedom of choice.

The future of productivity and The Cloud

Most valuable is the developments that implement the vision of Microsoft. Every server development is designed with the possibility of an online deployment in mind. The most important server platforms are already available in a cloud version. Microsoft is delivering their products in a software as well as a service version. This is the case for server platforms as well as client products.

Microsoft believes in the Software and Services approach. Delivering software as a service is not only about a cloud deployment. It also means a whole different business model. During the old model Microsoft sold licenses, which are owned by the customer. The hardware underneath the software was also owned by the customer. Much like the electric power plant 'owning my own power production' this computing power is moving to a utility. Power is available and used whenever needed for whatever use and payed for by use. This same business model is now part of cloud computing.

Microsoft calls the freedom of choice - three screens and a cloud, delivers software + services and is All In on this.

In the last years I witnessed the shift to more focus to the online deployments and I think this will be the end goal. It will take some time however to make this available to everyone and to change this industry.

Productivity is NOT about Technology

So the technology seems to be no limit anymore. So why not start immediately? The future of productivity is not about technology. It is a mindset, the courage to start to build a vision and take the first step into this future. To gain advantage of these first steps and invest these first revenues back into this future.

If we should have learned something from the last big information technology implementations and the impact on our organizations, it is the change needed to reach the predicted results. Too often system integrators didn't prevent organizations for mistakes in the estimation and the effort needed to prepare an organization for the new way of working with the system.

Know where you stand as an organization, how mature is your organization. Know where you want to go, have a clear vision and strategy for your productivity goals as part of and fitting in your overall business strategy. Know how to reach the goals you aim on; be sure you have a clear roadmap and understanding of the impact of every step before taking of.

These are open doors, but whatever big or small implementation - do not underestimate the importance of these rules of thumb. These are very worthwhile the effort and will ensure a much better return on your investment. There has been a tremendous development in the consulting methodology and tools to estimate the maturity, provide organizations with a clear roadmap and a broad set of best practice change interventions. For those organizations who are interested or are looking for a consultancy practice that has a fit with the Microsoft vision and technology stack, checkout the Impuls and Impact methods and for instance the Factor4Index tool to estimate maturity and provide an organization with a set of interventions.

New Way of Work not yet adopted by SMB

Developing a vision, adopting and implementing a new way of work and the technology needed to support that will take time. Investing time will cost money. Time is scarce and valuable. In this time of economic crisis the business has to go on more than ever. On the other site a crisis creates opportunities for the future; it is a turning point, a prelude to a new time.

The cost of the investments in a new technology or 'just' a new way of deployment can be calculated. The revenues of choosing for computing as a service instead of the tactical cost center too. Changing to a new way of work is a lot harder. We all know this change will take a lot of energy - mind the experience of the implementations of the ERP in the 80's. That took a lot more change in the way of work of the organization as was estimated and forecasted by the system integrators.
So what is a wise approach for the Small and Medium-sized enterprise? Adopt the developments now, or should investments be postponed? Is the focus on cutting cost more important than taking care of the future of productivity of the company?
In my opinion the technology is ready to take every size enterprise to the next level. The last developments and a few to be released in the very near future will enable the future of productivity within the small-sized businesses very naturally.

First steps needed are not about very big investments and organizational changes, but well-chosen smaller steps can make a big difference in the way these organizations are able to connect, share and collaborate or provide them with the possibility to engage with their existing or new markets. New deployments changing tactical cost centers into computing utility will enable these companies to reach out to much more distant markets, never imagined to be accessible.
The new way of work (NWOW) or 'Het Nieuwe Werken' (HNW) is a concept used by a lot of platform, solution or consultancy vendors. Some of them actually claim to be the inventor and owner of the name. Every vendor has its own definition of NWOW but are all trying to explain the same essence. It is not about technology it is not even new. It is about being productive and being able to be productive in this ever changing environment. Well we use technology to support the productivity, to be able to connect, to create content and to collaborate in an effective way. Most of all it should be fun, being able to choose your way of working at a time that suits you and with the means you choose.

Being able to choose the way a technology as a mean is deployed and functionality is consumed is a huge difference. The organization can invest in the change of the organization instead of rewiring the infrastructure and have to wait about a year for new functionality to be able to react to the ever changing environment.

A new way of work does not mean that employees of a company are given more freedom in the form of time, but that a company as a team has the ability to organize the work in a better balance with the private lives of the employees. A better fit in the value chain where a vendor or a customer is not your neighbor down the street by definition. The result is a better motivated employee, happier customers in which you can invest time and deliver high quality products at lower cost. Together, you, your company and your partners and customers.
So my advice is to take these developments into consideration and invest in the first steps of the future of productivity. Have fun.

If any questions arise please feel free to contact me. I'll be more than happy to help you out or arrange the contacts you need to get your questions answered or problems solved to your satisfaction.

ard.van.someren@ricoh.nl
@avsomeren

The future of productivity - Roadmap announcements BPOS

2010-07-30T09:09:00.001+02:00

Wave 14 to The Cloud

This year Microsoft is releasing the last new versions of their Wave 14 program. Lot's of their major server and client products have been updated with new functionality. More important ALL of them have been redesigned and developed with The Cloud in mind.

With the launch of Exchange, SharePoint and Office 2010 earlier this year, Microsoft began to work to update BPOS* with the new capabilities that these products deliver. Microsoft started with their biggest customers. They have dedicated cloud deployments and now are fully deployed on the 2010 wave products.

In the next update, Microsoft will bring decades of on-premise innovation to the cloud for the multitennant SKU as well. Functionalality will get very close to parity with our server solutions.

WPC10 announcements

During the last Microsoft World Partner Conference in Washington DC a few announcements were made about the Online Roadmap. Microsoft did not provide exact dates for these releases. Buzz is that a preview of the new BPOS offering before the end of this calendar year. I wonder if that will happen...
More accurate and a bit more likely is the estimated timeframe of the delivery of the updates to each of the managed services and new online platform capabilities within this fisical year (Jul '10 - Jun '11).

Microsofts call for action to partners and cutomers is to get ready for this wave and the 'online tranistion', to focus on Business Model transformation and getting customers ready and deployed.

What functionality to expect?

A Lot of sessions at the WPC covered cloud services and next wave BPOS (codename 'Union'). These slides from the slidedeck of session 'CLD09 The Future of BPOS: Next Generation of Microsoft Online Services' provide insight in the updates to come.

SharePoint Online
The functionalities in this slide give insight in what to expect, check the original deck for the detail slide or drop me a note.

Office Communications Server '14' Online
OCS on-premise will be released this fall. Most functionality will move to the online services during 2011. Do not expect to be released in the first update.

Exchange Online

These are three of the most important server products that will add a lot of functionality to the Microsoft Online offering and great opportunities to extend the business solutions that support productivity. Mind that all this functionality is delivered in a total productivity suite and combined with the office 2010 client software provide a great experience in a familiar environment for the end user. Office 2010 (Web Apps) is also part of the Online offering.

* BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services) or Microsoft Online Services is a proposition of Microsoft; Enterprise class software delivered via subscription services hosted by Microsoft and sold with partners

First Recap Microsoft World Partner Conference #wpcdc #mspartner

2010-07-18T17:48:00.000+02:00

Sitting on the couch I try to kill my jetlag and recap the 2010 Microsoft World Partner Conference in Washington DC of last week. At this moment not all content is online jet and in my opinion we lack the keynote video of Kevin Turner COO of microsoft the most. I will cover that part later. For those who want to take a peek, read the transcription.

Last year WPC09

The wpcdc was usefull but not as spectacular as the one last year in New Orleans (WPC09). Every event is produced different arround a theme. The theme of last year, in the middle of the worldwide crisis was about change. Kevin Turner and Steve Balmer talked about the worldwide reset. - chack out the last year videos of these keynotes.

It was not only the change resulting the crisis that hit us all, but it was the enormous opportunity and the energy how it was brought to the stage last year. Kevin Turner had a five point game plan back then.

Be realistic about the causes of our challenges - environment vs strategy
Prepare for an unknown length and depth of downturn
Deepen and strenghten our customer and partner relationships
Grow our marketshare and compete to win
Response with a sense of urgency

Also last year there were a lot of realy changing new products to announce by Microsoft. Wave 14 is implemented since the 2009 WPC. This means that the most important products of Microsoft like Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft server 2008, SQL server 2008R2 and of course the new release of SharePoint 2010. Just a few products from the wave 14 have to be released in the next few months.

Last but not least the new partner program was announced at the last WPC in New Orleans, 12 months ago now. So just 6 months to go.

What happened last year?

The Wave 14 product released are a big succes for Microsoft, no doubt. Never experienced such a big demand in the market with a new server product like SharePoint 2010 so soon after it's release. Clearly the market picked up the possibility's this new version delivered to the market. Never met such a confidence in a new release from the perspective of the market as we experience now with SharePoint 2010.

The change in the partner program is implemented in a few fases. I mention two with impact for us Microsoft Partners:

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
Competences

Measurement of the customer satisfaction is now obligated to meet the partner competence requirements. when reenrollment is necessary this customer survey must be carried out. The competences itself are changed recently. Other names, other requirements, some competences are new. In this fase this will have just a limited impact on the partner status.

Most obviouse result is that the Partner status will change in the new Microsoft Partner Network. Microsoft Gold partner will change.

The biggest Buzz last year and still very hot is the cloud. Microsoft is ALL IN.

Does Microsoft meet the expectations this WPC10?

About 13.000 attended this event. That is a lot!

This year Kevin Turner presented his game plan. 4 this time.

Leading with the cloud
Driving Windows 7
and Office 2010
Growing share by competing to win

The wave 14 products are released, just as expected and doing very well. The announcements of the release of a few products left in the wave 14 are confirmed nothing more. Not spectacular, but most products are released just a few months ago. We all knew there wouldn't be to much new in this corner. Take a look at the points of Kevin Turner. Ofcourse the opportunity of software renewall of Windows and Office is HUGE and betting BIG on cloud can be found on the first place... Still not spectacular.

In the partner program some things changed. The titel on the Microsoft partner badge is changed from Microsoft Partner Network to just Microsoft Partner. Well, partners are partners, not a network. Most spectacular was the announcement a very little while before the start of the event that Allison Watson will be succeeded by Jon Roskill as corporate VP worldwide partner group. She was still all over the program. Well her name was and the name of Jon not... Check out the transcription of her latest speech at the WPC10.

The change to Jon Roskill was downright disappointing. He will be great I guess, but till now I did not see that. Everyone I spoke, felt the same I am afraid. He lacks the energy of Allison, looks like he has no confidence and is not able to fascinate the audience. At the beginning of his carreer he looks upon a huge challenge. The challenge to lead Microsoft and it's Partner Network to the next and last fase.

The last thing happend this year is the cloud. We are all in is what Steve Balmer, Kevin Turner and all other excecutives shouted. Betting big on Cloud. Well I believe that BUT, it is very disapointing that we heard nothing about the renewall of BPOS the current name of the current online business productivity proposition of Microsoft. I expected the BETA release would be announced at this event. It looks like this will not happen till Q1 2011.

Ofcourse Microsoft announced the Azure Appliance, but that's about all folks. A small ray of hope is the fact that this means that Microsoft CRM Online will be in the same release pace as the new BPOS wave...

New Way Of Work (NWOW), more than teleworking?

2010-07-03T12:00:00.000+02:00

With the title

Het nieuwe werken, méér dan telewerken (New Way Of Work, more than teleworking)

an article(*) in Drive a magazine of LeasePlan about mobile technologie in new ways of work is opened.

In the first paragraph, the words at the heart of the goal, but also directly the biggest obstacle of the thinking behind the new work stresses: the total flexibility of the old and rusty 9 to 5-culture.

Culture

Culture often is defined as:

An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group

Cultural change

Cultures are subject to change and internally effected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. Cultural change refers to the dynamic process whereby cultures are changing and adapting to external or internal forces (globalization, advances in communication, transport and infrastructure improvements, etc).
Technology can be a driving force of change. In a bigger picture medical technology has contributed to demographic changes. Technology can contribute to changes in globalization and the way information is transported for instance.
Technology however is not the only driving factor of cultural change, as the definitions of culture make clear the human factor (knowledge, attitude, belief and values) is the one most important.

This human factor is influenced by the global surroundings and can by guided by the organisation that embrasses the New Way Of Work. Providing the technology, taking away some seat and reducing the capacity of the parkinglot will not lead to the desired changes.

The roll of employer

The employer has to change his goals, the way these goals are translated to measurable results and the way employees are rewarded. When I read the conclusion of the article(*) that states that espacially the employees object to teleworking I ask myself. Is it the objection to the new way of work,or has the employer some work to do in his implementation of the concept?

In the case of 38% of the employees who are afraid to take the necessary responsibility and feel that being seen on the job (30%). In my opinion this has to be solved by having a very transparant way how this vision of teleworking is implemented.
Missing the interaction and collaboration with collegues (42%) and the contact with colleques (27%) can actually be supported with technology, but well organised and supported minimal fysical contact by the management can help to make this figure much better.

The role of the organisation and it's management is changing with the change of the culture. Implementing teleworking as a part of new way of work, means other management style, technology can only support the succes of these changes.
(*)The article refers to a survey (Dutch) of TeleworkForum and Novay. They conclude from their survey that the biggest obstacle of teleworking are stated by the employee.
Without the details of the survey I can not explain this conclusion. For instance the opinion of the employer is missing.

Social Media and business productivity - use in the enterprise and for B2B in a immature community

2010-06-27T13:31:00.001+02:00

Social Media is all around us today. If you want to learn about it and are in the opportunity to take the time to investigate the subject you can choose from a lot of seminars, lunch sessions and roundtable discussions. The use of social media is not very mature in the most organisations. However some organisations are experimenting seriously with tools that support employees to communicate and collaborate with social media.

That these tools are slowly addopted by organisations is shown by the fact that best practices are developed. Not only the technical infrastructure is available, but also the means to help implementing these tools into the corporate communication is developed.
Developments and addoption rates of tools like twitter, yammer, socialcast and microblogging implementation into SharePoint (OfficeTalk) and the use of microblogs in LinkdIn show that these communication and collaboration infrastructure are more important today.
The development of ESM3 by Tessa van Doremaele and Gijsbert van der Sleen (Dutch) show on top of that, use of these technology is taken seriously by the community and the enterprises that are part of these community´s.

So in what situations these tools are used.
What I learned in my last few sessions is that there seems to be a difference between the use of social media to optimize our internal communication and to provide your employees with a collaboration platform and the use of social media to get involved with or engaging your customers.

As Wilco Turnhout concluded in his summery of the second Enterprise Social Media Roundtable #esmr, the use of social media for B2B purposes is an other story. A conclusion of that session was that the client was missing from the ESM3 model. Maybe, the engagement of clients or the the ´value chain´ can be defined as the next step of maturity.

During another roundtable session on social media the viewpoint of the B2B was discussed as focus with Kees Mulder of Kodak. Kodak ´a very technology driven company´, implemented social media in there B2B strategy. Other starting points mather in those cases. Main goal of internal or enterprise social media is to provide all members of an organisation with a communications and collaboration platform. When social media are used for B2B purposes the goals change. Still communication and collaboration as a platform is an important issue, but only as a mean to gain engagement with the customer. Goal is to take part in the discussions about your brand, learn from it and be able to react in the most transparent way possible. Even more important than when using social media inside the organisation is the governance of these engagements, reactions and discussions captured form this social channels. The logistics of this information, who is collecting, where are these questions routed and who is responding to the community is a challenge. At Kodak they established a dream job for these role´s - Chief Listener and Chief Sender - traffic control in charge of the information logistics of communication in the social media channel.

Something is changing #il

2010-06-23T16:06:00.000+02:00

Yesterday June 22nd I was one of the speakers on the third SharePoint and Storage session at Microsoft NL organised by Ricoh. In between we organised a roundtable discussion on the same subject at our headquarters in 's-Hertogenbosch.

Since quit a long time now I'm advocating the possibility's the Microsoft stack with SharePoint as platform can come available for your organization. In the last say three years I build the competence at Ricoh and in the last two years the productline Ricoh Document Store has been build.

I personaly had a special experience during the seminar. We used some surveys to measure the 'mood' of our public. Last November and December generaly the public was not convinced of the document management capability's of the SharePoint platform. Now about 9 mounth later and a lot of talking, some major developments and last but not least a new version of SharePoint released last Mai 12th this mood has changed dramatically.

The public was convinced of the possibility's and was looking for the reallife cases and best practices to use it now and with the upcomming changes in the SharePoint 2010 platform on premise and ofcourse the promisses of SharePoint online based on the new funtionality's.

Opportunity's for us ISV's and Integrators. We finaly can concentrate more on the functionality that adds the most vallue to the business processes and productivity of our customers.

The content of the seminar can be found on the YouTube and SlideShare channels of Ricoh.

Lots of tweets lost in cyber space; social media #fail

2010-06-15T22:04:00.000+02:00

A few days ago june 14th I discovered the loss of about half of my tweet count and history. Social media is increasingly used by enterprises for there communication. Communication within the firewall, but also outside of it. To communicate with colleagues but also with customers or the public. Using twitter as a microblog platform has it's drawback... No contract, no SLA, no garantees and no backup.
Keeping this in mind is necessary when considering adopting microblogging as a tool to implement a social media communication platform. In my case loosing my tweet history is not a disaster, still it is not what you expect from the platform and I do check on that history now and then. As part of coporate communication one can not afford to loose this history. Sometimes even it is legaly necessary to keep this communication history in a archive and deal with it as a record.

Bill Clinton Guest Speaker at Microsoft World Partner Conference 2010 Washington DC #WPC10

2010-06-15T21:37:00.000+02:00

Last year Microsoft World Partner Conference was in New Orleans. I loved that city, loved this BIG event. Last year I bumped into Jesse Jackson at the Hilton near the Ernest N. Morial convention center while drinking a beer at the bar.
This year the guest speaker at the conference will be Bill Clinton. Well I'm VERY currious what this former worldleader can tell and learn us about working together in this rapidly changing world of information.

Google kan het weer niet laten

2010-06-14T21:42:00.000+02:00

Grappig om keer op keer optredens en publicaties van Erik de Muinck Keizer tegen te komen waarin hij zijn verhaal voornamelijk als tegengeluid naar Microsoft brengt. Deze keer claimt hij in een interview in Computable het pure Nieuwe Werken. Terecht ook dat hij door deze opstelling dan weer eens op de vingers wordt getikt indien hij weer eens wat feiten vergeet te vertellen zodat het hele verhaal in het juiste perspectief wordt geplaatst. Waarom is Google niet gewoon trots op dat wat ze op dit moment hebben bereikt en waarom geen solide onderbouwing voor de 'cloud only' keuze waar Microsoft dat wel helder voor haar 'cloud en services' proposities neer weet te zetten?
Inderdaad is de ervaring dat een pure cloud benadering ook haar nadelen kan hebben, getuige het optreden van Erik zelf tijdens een ICT~Office event in Utrecht even geleden waar hij zijn presentatie niet helemaal kon afronden ivm het ontbreken van een (snelle) verbinding. Als ik me niet vergis is in het vergelijk dat daar door Gartner analist Jeffrey Mann ter afsluiting van het betoog van Google en Microsoft is gehouden nogal helder aangegeven wie op dit moment het meest volwassen in de markt staat.
Het is en blijft een keuze van de klant. Het is hij die bepaald of hij waarde hecht aan lokaal werken, zekerheid of flexibiliteit en in welke verhouding deze geleverd moeten worden.
Naar mijn mening werkt het beter om vanuit eigen kracht toegevoegde waarde aan te tonen een transparante houding en vertrouwen vormen daarvoor een basis.

Negen miljoen voor een digitale boekenkast is wel erg veel geld...

2010-06-07T21:59:00.001+02:00

Maandag 7 juni publiceert NU.nl het volgende bericht over investering in het digitaliseren van de Nederlandse bibliotheken:

DEN HAAG - Demissionair staatssecretaris Marja van Bijsterveldt (Cultuur) trekt dit jaar 9,1 miljoen extra uit voor bibliotheken, die daarmee op internet hun collecties en diensten beter kunnen presenteren.
Dat maakte zij maandag bekend.

''Steeds meer informatie komt in digitale vorm beschikbaar'', aldus de bewindsvrouw.

''De functie van de openbare bibliotheek verandert hierdoor. Met deze subsidie blijven bibliotheken bij de tijd.''

Landelijke bibliotheek

Uiteindelijk moet er één landelijke digitale bibliotheek komen. ''Bibliotheken transformeren langzamerhand van gebouwen met boeken en tijdschriften naar multimediale instellingen'', schetst een woordvoerder van Van Bijsterveldt.

''Via de stichting bibliotheek.nl wordt het mogelijk om vanuit huis te zoeken in de digitale catalogus, boeken te bestellen en te beschikken over een schat aan informatie.''

Het ministerie van OCW werkt samen met de bibliotheekbranche, de gemeenten en de provincies aan de opbouw van deze landelijke digitale openbare bibliotheek.

Het karakter van dit bericht vind ik persoonlijk nogal conservatief. Ben ik het dan niet eens met de beweging, digitaal beschikbaar maken en breed ontsluiten van informatie? Jawel maar het bericht en de motivatie van Van Bijserveld om hier publiek geld in te steken geeft de huidige ontwikkelingen niet juist weer naar mijn idee.

Het is niet de digitalisering van de biblotheken die de rol van het instituut veranderd, de veranderde rol van informatie en snelheid waarmee deze door de maatschappij gecreerd en geconsumeerd wordt maakt dat de rol van de bibliotheek moet veranderen. Ja digitalisering van informatie maakt het mogelijk om de vraag logistiek in te vullen, maar vormt daarin een eerste stap.

De mogelijkheid bieden om te kunnen beschikken over een schat van informatie en te kunnen zoeken binnen een digitale catalogus geeft mij ook niet direct het warme gevoel dat nodig is voor een bibliotheek om bij de tijd te blijven.

Wel ben ik blij met het getoonde initiatief om informatie die in al deze bolwerken opgesloten zit als een onderdeel te zien van een landelijke multimedia instelling. Veel succes en creativiteit in het vinden van de juiste logistieke kanalen naar de afnemer!

Enterprise Search as part of Business Productivity 2 - Seminar Amplexor (B)

2010-06-04T17:03:00.003+02:00

Yesterday june 3rd I attended at a Seminar organised by Amplexor in Diegem near Brussels airport Belgium. Amplexor profiles itself as a pure Content Management company and provides their customers wih services on ECM. In the opening presentation of Eric Pieters (CEO). The ECM offering of Amplexor is devided amongst four quadrants: Web Content Management, Document Management, Intranets and COllaboration and Information Architecture and Search. The later was the subject of this seminar.

I was not the only Dutch attendent. Sjoerd de Valk of Winvision, who I met at the Las Vegas SharePoint Conference last year, came to hear the story too.

In my earlier blog I explained that I was triggered by the description of the content of this seminar. First by stating that Enterprise search projects very often are started with a high ambition. In the session of Paul Hermans this was explained on a lively manner.
In my opinion the common mistake to start with a under estimated complexity should be taken even more serious. Before starting to implement a enterprise search infrastrucure, be sure you have a vision and a strategy on information. That's an important start indeed. Next do not start to implement the Search infrastructure before you have a Access and Authentication infrastructure you can use to implement the search upon. True, but not that easy too! Third do not try to implement this huge one interface, this single user experience for all users or rolls in the entire enterprise. Build applications on top of the search infrastructure layer. Last but not least pay attention to the user, manage the change and build trust.

Not a bad apporach. In my opinion it is smart to devide the information demand of the enterprise into smaller chunks. When this is done in the 'envisioning fase' where the vision and strategy of the information access is build, the implementation of different information goals can be split up. More smaller projects, building the total enterprise search ambition over time.

The experience of Amplexor in this field wasn't illustrated with a lot of customer cases. Overall a nice session. Thanks Paul.

The last parts of the seminar the technology and functionality of the search infrastructure was presented by two people of Microsoft. Both former FAST employees; Wolgang Mederle and Hilde Rietveld. Most of the stuf I've seen before on SharePoint or other Microsoft conferences and events. Important to notice is that the promises of Microsoft and FAST in 2008 when FAST was acquired by Microsoft are fullfilled in the new product versions of FAST and Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

Important additions as advanced people search as part of knowledge managment, facetted and federated search, ranking and search advise are now available in the new products.

Nice work FAST and Microsoft.

There are some good comparison sheets available on the Microsoft Technet side. For example the poster were the product specs are compared:

SharePoint Foundation 2010
Search Server 2010 Express
Search Server 2010
SharePoint Server 2010
FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

Another nice source in Thechnet is the Getting Started with Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010 Products and SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Search, FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

So are there some examples that use these technology's. There were some demo's based on real life enterprise search implementations:

Scirus - a scientific database /try flu. By filling in a search query you get results in body. On the left bar there are two main sources for the results: journals and other web. These are facets. You can refine your search by choosing journals or the federated other websources. On the bottom there is another part that can help you to refine your query with advised keywords.
Times online - by opening a topic (search) a newspaper site is composed. A topis is realy a composition of related articles post on the same position of the page. Again you can recognise the facets and federated search results on the left. On the backend of this site Times has implemented a business model. Content of Times itself is sold for further reading.

Some other examples:

Wolters Kluwer
Read Elsevier (MOSS and ESP)
NXP
Thomson Reuters

Enterprise Search as part of Business Productivity

2010-06-02T21:44:00.002+02:00

Tomorrow - June 3th - I'll attend the Enterprise Search Seminar organised by Amplexor in the Pullman Diegem (B). High expectations given the program. I hope they manage to meet my expectation. The first session planned will set the stage. The approach of this session helping businesses to succeed by aiming on a realistic goal is interesting.

The second session however has my biggest attention. Search as part of the Microsoft vision in the field of Business Productivity supported by a single search platform. If they manage to show some cases to support the scenario they will meet my expectation.

Why my interest? Well Business Productivity is key for businesses. In the competence cluster needed to establish the functionality in an organisation that will be able to optimize the productivity, the development of Search will play a very important roll.

The technological developments due to investments are enormous. Microsoft made a big leap forward with the acquisition of FAST in 2008. I remember the session of Zia Zaman (VP Global marketing FAST back then, now CTO LG) at the soldout SharePoint conference in Seattle (2008) where he showed the FAST product that now is incorporated in the SharePoint 2010 platform.

In that session he explained how the market was devided. Google as the biggest one on the internet (the other approach in the Microsoft vision) but more important the field of enterprise search dominated by Microsoft and FAST.

I loved the longtail slide in his presentation back then. I have to look it up and will add it later.

June 3th:

Oké found it. This picture tells us how the market is (March 2008) devided between the big three and the rest. On the left the Big three devide 30% of the information access market. Most of these search query's are based on internet search scenario's. On the right most of the 70% of the search query's are about Enterprise search data access (ESP). This part is dominated by FAST. Now two years later Microsoft has adopted and integrated a lot af the FAST search capability's in there SharePoint 2010 platform. Picture the total of the Microsoft market and the ESP market (the business productivity part) in the long tail together. That's a very big chunk of the total, but more important: the money is on the right side.

Onderwijs in het groter sociale geheel

2010-06-02T13:54:00.000+02:00

Onlangs kwam ik voorbij een blog" van Jeroen Spierings waarin verwezen werd naar de Conferentie voor Onderwijsvernieuwing en ICT. Het beeld wat ik bij onderwijs in Nederland heb op dit moment is een omgeving waar nog veel te winnen valt. Dat beeld verschilt niet heel veel van veel andere sectoren overigens. Dat laatste is dan weer een qualificatie die (ook) toe te schrijven is aan de volwassenheid van de ICT sector denk ik.

Technologische ontwikkelingen en de adoptie in het onderwijs lopen niet synchroon natuurlijk. Veelal is het beeld dat de jonge generatie sneller toegang vindt tot en gebruik maakt van de mogelijkheden die deze ontwikkelingen bieden. Mensen die zich de laatste jaren verdiept hebben in deze ontwikkelingen en de ontwikkeling van de nieuwe generatie kennen de aanduiding generatie Einstein ongetwijfeld.

Neem als voorbeeld het toenemende gebruik van sociale media. Ooit begonnen in de tijd van MSN (of eigenlijk al daarvoor) en het meer algemeen geaccepteerd gebruik van chat als communicatie middel. Nu uitgegroeid naar hele platformen (of tools die samen een platform kunnen vormen naar behoefte), waarbinnen diverse communicatie middelen de moderene 'sociale' mens elkaar kunnen vinden.

Elkaar vinden. Dat is wel de kern van deze sociale media. Elkaar en dat wat ons op dat moment interesseerd. Of dat nu is voor onze hobby of voor ons werk. Nog een grens die lijkt te vervagen, werk ik nu (schrijven van een blog thuis op het terras in de zon) of zit ik op thuis op het terras in de zon (en schrijf een blog)?

Het beeld dat ik de laatste jaren heb ontwikkeld bij de jonge generatie is dat het gebruik van de sociale media hoog is. Kijk maar eens naar het aantal contacten dat deze jongeren 'onderhouden' in hun Hyves netwerk (16 jaar en een paar honderd contacten is heel normaal). Email zo roepen wij professionals, specialisten in deze ontwikkelingen is iets uit de voorgaande eeuw en jongeren gebruiken het niet meer.

Het beeld wat ik hier schets is vrij algemeen. Zijn deze ontwikkelingen dan ook terug te vinden in het onderwijs waar deze jongeren onderdeel van uit maken? Anders gezegd: Scholen en instellingen zijn onderdeel van een groter geheel. Dat groter geheel omvat voor de jongeren zelf nadrukkelijk ook hun privé. Waar de grenzen tussen werk en privé vervagen, geldt dit voor onderwijs en privé ook. Ontwikkelingen als de brede school en discussies om ook 3 jarige al te laten starten met hun kleutercarriere (naar een nieuwe kleuter periode) geven aan dat deze ontwikkeling doorzet.

Bij onze zuiderburen is het al heel gebruikelijk om vroegtijdig kleuters te ontwikkelen.

Ik stuite op een onderzoek dat in België is gedaan naar sociale netwerken en onderwijs, dat in december 2009 is uitgevoerd. De resultaten van 1 maart 2010 (meer dan 900 reacties via digitale kanalen) zijn door Bram Faem in een presentatie gepubliceerd. Het onderzoek probeert een beeld te krijgen bij de vraag hoe het onderwijs staat tegenover het gebruik van sociale netwerken. Maken docenten daar bewust geen gebruik van, of passen ze deze bewust wel toe om de mogelijkheden van het onderwijs te verrijken?
België heeft te maken gehad met een aantal maatschappelijke incidenten. Vriendschappelijke relaties tussen docenten en leerlingen zijn een taboe en onethisch. Het onderzoek maakt niet duidelijk welke invloed dat de angst die hieruit voortkomt heeft op het inzetten en uitbuiten van de mogelijkheden. Wel doen de resultaten vermoeden dat deze maatschappelijke incidenten hierop van invloed zijn. Niet geheel onverstandig is er voor gekozen om nadrukkelijk geheel anoniem met de resultaten om te gaan.

De groep van respondenten die aangeeft zich bewust niet in sociale netwerken te begeven is 34%! Bijna 80% voegt nooit huidige leerlingen toe. Daarmee is de adoptie binnen deze groep van deelnemers nagenoeg nihil te noemen. Pas als de leerling afstudeert accepteerd 46% van de docenten deze alumni in hun sociaal netwerk. Tot zover de angst die regeert.

Aan de positieve zijde van het onderzoek, de vraag of een sociaal netwerk kansen biedt in het onderwijs, ontstaat het beeld over de mogelijkheden die door het onderzochte lerarencorps worden onderkend. 7% geeft aan nut te zien en het ook als dusdanig in te zetten, terwijl nog een 56% aangeeft wel nut te zien, maar het niet in te zetten. Dat biedt perspectief zou je zeggen.

Het onderzoek bekijkt vervolgens nog of het stellen van regels verandering in het gebruik zou veroorzaken. Van deze groep van respondenten geeft 41% aan dat regels gewend zijn. Frapant is dat vervolgens van die scholen waar wel regels ingesteld zijn, een lager percentage sociale netwerken gebruikt of inzet. Je vraagt je dan ook direct af wat deze richtlijnen proberen te reguleren.

In de samenvatting van de Conferentie onderwijsvernieuwing en ICT die Mark Timmermans publiceerde in zijn blog merk ik op dat ook bij ons in Nederland 'maatregelen' getroffen worden om de risico's van sociale media te beperken. 'Gebruik van Social Media tools is nog vaak “verboden” binnen onderwijsinstellingen. Veiligheid boven alles maakt de adoptie van deze middelen niet waarschijnlijk.

In de samenvatting wordt overigens ook aangegeven dat de Generatie Einstein niet bestaat. Nu ben ik wel heel erg benieuwd naar de achtergrond waarop deze stelling is geponeerd. Wat ik niet helemaal (helemaal niet) kan plaatsen is de stelling 'Studenten hebben niet zoveel met Social Media. Docenten kunnen hun onderwijs wel efficiënter maken met Social Media'. Feit is dat vooral jongeren veel gebruik maken van deze middelen. Feit ook is dat de adoptie in het onderwijs domein nog niet heel hoog is, mede door de angst voor misbruik. Mag ik daar dan uit afleiden dat het begrip van het onderwijs domein als het gaat om het gebruik niet heel hoog is? Immers docenten en leerlingen bewegen zich niet in dezelfde sociale netwerken. Het tweede deel van de stelling heeft een parallel naar het onderzoek uit België en stemt me hoopvol.

Zelf sta ik vrij liberaal tegenover het reguleren van sociale netwerken, in het onderwijs en zeker in het bedrijfsleven. Naar mijn mening leidt dit tot bestrijding van het symptoom, niet de oorzaak. Beïnvloeding van gedrag en ontwikkeling van maatschappelijk begrip bereik je met transparantie, niet met strenge regels waarmee excessen onder de radar verdwijnen.

busy but balanced

2010-05-29T13:10:00.000+02:00

Last week I've been busy. Still glad that people I met noticed I was relaxed. I felt that way to. Why? Well lot of stuff going on but still managed to keep the balance with my personal business.

When thinking about how to support businesses and more important the people who work with and whitin those businesses to regain the balance, taking time to reflect about your own behaviour is valuable.

The effect of taking control over that balance last week resulted in delivering my support in a flexible and agile way. Information I had access to because of my knowledge or the knowledge of the people I know was delivered in the right format and at the right moment. A collegue of mine was able to finish a well thought-out proposal in record time.

The quote of Danah Boyd twittered by Peter de Haas last week was typical for what happened. "Information is power, but intepretation is more powerful," - Danah Boyd, speaking at the at the O'Reilly Gov 2.0 Expo -

This is what I meant when I made some changes to the Wikipedia entry 'informatielogistiek' when preparing a college on this topic (Dutch). Interpret information leads to knowledge.

Thinking over a lot of these things was done at home and I could put them together within my minimum fysical presence. Left me some time for my self too.

Good results, busy and well balanced.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 server - NEN2082 gecertificeerde implementatie [QNH] bij Gemeente Nieuwegein

2010-05-22T11:56:00.002+02:00

waar zijn we nu helemaal mee bezig?

Even geleden heb ik al eens melding gemaakt van de pre-release installatie van Microsoft SharePoint server 2010 door QNH bij de Gemeente Nieuwegein. De implementatie van het DMS/RMA is door de ECB geaudit en NEN2082 gecertificeerd. Dat is bijzonder!
Bijzonder knap om te beginnen in een markt die in het midoffice segment sterke vertegenwoordinging kent van spelers als BCT, Cirkel en een aantal andere partijen. QNH is met hun oorspronkelijke IBM practice en de wat later ontwikkelde Microsoft practice vooral bekend als specialist op het gebied van Business integration. De gemeente markt is - zeker in het DMS/RMA domein - nieuw.
Bijzonder om dat het gaat om een implementatie die samen met Microsoft voor de officiele release van SharePoint 2010 op 12 mei 2010 is gerealiseerd.
Wat ik nu vooral bijzonder vind is dat ook de collega gemeenten in Nederland (ca 400 in het totaal) met grote getalen deel hebben genomen aan het seminar dat rondom deze case is georganiseerd in Nieuwegein op 19 mei j.l. Dat daar op dat moment het succesverhaal is gepresenteerd door Pieter van der Hoog van de gemeente Nieuwegein zelf en dat het NEN 2082 certificaat door Dick Marijnen van het ECB is uitgereikt aan de burgemeester.

Een kort uitreiksel van het verslag van een aanwezige toehoorder:

Ik heb gisteren een congres (voor gemeenten "only") bezocht waar 2 cases zijn behandeld van de gemeente Nieuwegein en de Gemeente Venlo. Onder de titel "waar zijn we nu helemaal mee bezig?" is de stand van zaken omtrent e-Dienstverlening in Gemeenteland aan de orde geweest, en meer specifiek van de gemeenten Nieuwegein en Venlo. De partner die het Document management systeem (DMS) en het Records management systeem (RMA) heeft ontworpen en geimplementeerd, is QNH. Er zijn een aantal unieke kenmerken die mij opgevallen zijn aan deze cases:

De aanleiding en het NUP
De keuze voor een volledig op Microsoft technologie ingerichte front en mid-office van CRM-ERP
Een gecertificeerde DMS en RMA archieffunctie.
De aanleiding:
Zowel Venlo als Nieuwegein zijn gestart met het herinrichten van processen en systemen vanwege een aanstaande verhuizing naar een nieuw stadhuis, respectievelijk in 2013 en 2011. Voor Venlo gold nog een extra argument, namelijk dat de dienstverlening aan burgers en bedrijven op een onacceptabel laag niveau stond. Dit heeft allereerst geleid tot een forse reorganisatie waarbij een hoog percentage ambtenaren uitstroomden (30% werd genoemd), en een even fors percentage op basis van geschiktheid (competenties) weer instroomde. Omdat e-Dienstverlening afdelingoverstijgend is (dienst overstijgend, en niet dienst/afdeling centrisch) is een herinrichting van processen en systemen noodzakelijk. Verder speelt een belangrijke rol dat men geen ruimte, en dus geld, wenst te besteden aan het papieren archief in de nieuwe huisvesting.
De projecten die onder de paraplu van het NUP zijn gedefinieerd zijn niet de dominante factor geweest. Dit beeld werd bevestigd door meerdere vertegenwoordigers van gemeenten waarbij het niet opleggen van echte sancties leidt tot een gedrag van "het zal mijn tijd wel duren".

2. De keuze:
De belangrijkste argumenten om zowel de front en midoffice technologie van Microsoft te omarmen zijn:
Geen problemen met systeemintegratie, alles van 1 fabrikant en 1 leverancier.
Geen problemen met leveranciers die naar elkaar wijzen als systemen niet naar wens werken, en de klant als pingpongbal gebruiken.
Alleen de interfacing naar externe partijen (databases) moet ingeregeld worden.
Lange ontwikkeltijd voordat het 1e product live kan (bijvoorbeeld "parkeervergunningen"), snelle doorlooptijd voor de volgende producten.
Door de toegenomen transparantie en de ontsluitingsmogelijkheden gaat de frontoffice (KCC) steeds meer taken van de mid-office overnemen. Doelstelling is dat 80% van de vragen die men krijgt door de front-office beantwoord en afgehandeld kan worden.

3. Certificering:
De inrichting van het DMS en de RMA zijn conform de NEN2082 specificaties gerealiseerd. Het European Certification Bureau (ECB) heeft dit certificaat overhandigd (En heeft ook de audit uitgevoerd). Nieuwegein is de 1e nederlandse gemeente die met een gecertificeerd sharepoint 2010 platform aan de slag gaat. Een gecertificeerde DMS/RMA platform is de eerste voorwaarde waar men aan moet voldoen om toegang te krijgen tot de overheidsmarkt.

Wat verder opviel:
Marktsituatie:
Een veelgehoorde karakteristiek als gesproken wordt over de gemeentemarkt en haar leveranciers (op het gebied van DMS/RMA), is dat deze markt volledig dichtgetimmerd zou zijn met leveranciers als Circle, Decos, BCT, Hummingbird, Alfresco, etc. Opvallend is dat QNH een relatief nieuwe partij is (opgericht in 2004, 500 werknemers) en met een concept dat volledig gericht is op de Microsoft product suite, toegang heeft verkregen tot in ieder geval 2 gemeenten. De belangstelling is echter groot. Er moesten (op het congres) stoelen bijgeplaatst worden vanwege de grote belangstelling van collega gemeenten. Ik schat dat er ongeveer 120-150 bezoekers waren. Dit suggereert ten minste dat e-Dienstverlening kansen biedt voor nieuwe partijen.

[met dank aan Gerard Schuckman voor het waarnemen]

It has been busy, get used to it.

2010-05-22T11:15:00.000+02:00

Last month or so it has been a very busy period. I visited an Executive briefing of Microsoft in Redmond where we discussed the Microsoft Online and Cloud propositions. I visited an EBC about this theme about a year ago and back then a lot of promisses where made.
Well the Microsoft Cloud Azure is released and it seems this will become a real succes. Still a lot of development is needed to make this technologie and functionality available for the masses. In the end IT infra will become a utility.
The biggest promise was made towards the Microsoft Online community. Business Productivity Online Services or short BPOS has become codename Union. The name BPOS wasn't exactly sexy or appeling. Well the speed in the online market is enormous and that surprised everybody, even the marketing of Microsoft. But what's in the name. Well there are a lot of changes to be taken in mind.
Today it is not posible to deploy solutions with custom code on the Microsoft Online environment. So for 'us' ISV's and other Microsoft partners the added value opportunity's where somewhat limmited. Well suspect this to change. Microsoft is still a company that sells licences (on-premise or as an online utility) and depents on added value thrue it's partner channel.
When this issue is solved, whit it a LOT of functionality will become available. For instance SharePoint 2007 has evolved to SharePoint 2010. A big change with lot's of opportunity's. There's a lot of material out there to help you compare the different versions. BPOS today is based on SharePoint 2007, the server version or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). But as discussed a lot of functionality is not available in the multi tennant Online version BPOS. When UNION will hit the market (and me personaly expect it won't be that long to happen), a lot of the new SharePoint 2010 server functionality will be available ONLINE!
So what can I tell you about the changes... Not a lot NDA I'm sorry. But think about the goals of SharePoint (one place to SHARE your thoughts, the informaton or better the knowledge (tacit information), think about the developments in the social media tooling all arround us), take a look at the new functionality of SharePoint 2010 and you can imagine what will be subject of change yourself.
I can also explain what I do not like about SharePoint 2007, or what in my opinion is laking in that version. For instance SharePoint 2007 was still siloed. It was hard to make it one place to share your information. Searching information acrose a collection of sites was hard, maintainn the same enterprise structure for your meta information is not provided automaticaly in SharePoint 2007.
What do you think about the wiki functionality in SharePoint 2007? Well I love wiki's, but hate the poor suport in the SharePoint 2007 version. Ever tried to ad a picture? or a link? In Sharepoint 2010 wiki is everywhere, every page is a wiki and of course the tooling fits with a great user experience.
What do you expect from an online information and collaboration platform? Well you expect it to integrate with your onpremise environment if needed. You expect to be able to collaborate despite of the virtual wall between departments, but what about your company as an boundary object? You build extranets to reach to a higher business productivity even between company's, even if it is a very small company of one person who has some project business with you for a very short time and want to log on anonymous.

Well you can picture this for your self.

When? July the Microsoft World Partner conference will take place. Take a look at the keynote's of Steve Balmer about Online and Cloud strategy We're all in - is the new slogan. Given the growing attention IT utillity is given from the midmarket business my answer is soon. It is going to be busy!

Ook Ricoh levert oplossingen op basis van Microsoft Online diensten #li

2010-04-29T10:45:00.001+02:00

'Wanneer u online bent kunt u via Outlook zien wie van uw collega's bereikbaar is, en heeft u altijd inzicht in agenda's. Ook kunt u videovergaderen, en uw bureaublad delen op afstand. U heeft bovendien altijd de laatste documenten binnen handbereik - óók als u niet op de zaak bent.'

Dit is de belofte zoals op de nieuwe site voor Microsoft Online diensten staat geschreven. Ricoh Nederland levert al meer dan 10 jaar aan haar klanten. De laatste jaren - als Microsoft Gold Partner - worden oplossingen op basis van SharePoint gebouwd. Deze oplossingen zijn inmiddels door ontwikkeld naar producten als de Document Store van Ricoh. Hiermee wordt een verbinding gelegd tussen de wereld van het papier en de digitale informatie.

Documenten spelen een belangrijke rol als informatiedrager binnen bedrijfsprocessen. Enterprise Information Management, Informatie Engineering en de logistiek die deze informatie op het juiste moment in de juiste vorm op de juiste plek brengt zijn specialismen die in de oplossingen zijn terug te vinden. Specifiek voor een aantal processen zijn hier frameworks voor opgebouwd en geven templates invulling aan de behoeften. Zo kent iedereen de vraag en de daaraan gerelateerde problemen om een factuur van een leverancier efficient door een organisatie heen te begeleiden.

Het besef dat het klassieke Document Management slechts voor een deel de huidige bedrijfsprocessen ondersteund wordt steeds groter. Denk aan de ontwikkelingen waar Microsoft in haar nieuwe SharePoint 2010 release de mogelijkheid biedt om documenten in een set te verzamelen. In de overheid kennen we deze relatie tussen documenten en informatie als ´een zaak´, in de verzekeringswereld of de advocatuur wordt wel gesproken over een dossier of een case. Ricoh heeft deze functionaliteit in haar Frameworks opgenomen en biedt de mogelijkheid om naast het document ook de hele set van gerelateerde documenten als een dossier te behandelen.

Steeds vaker komen documenten in digitale vorm binnen en de integratie met deze digitale stromen worden steeds beter. Feit is dat in de huidige wereld nog steeds erg veel informatie in een ongestructureerde vorm op papier wordt aangeleverd. Postkamers hebben nog steeds een zeerbelangrijke rol in het verzamelen van deze binnenkomende stroom en het voorbewerken en afleveren van deze gegevens op de juiste plek in het bedrijfsproces. Efficiente en effectieve verwerking is de eerste stap in de besparing in het informatielogistieke proces. Door een deze informatie stroom te digitaliseren en te integreren in een digitale postkamer waar verschillende informatie kanalen (digitaal en analoog) samenkomen wordt dit proces in gang gezet.

Lang niet elk bedrijf ziet het beheer van de ondersteunende informatiesystemen als taak. Men ziet op tegen de complexiteit en de kosten die de investering met zich meebrengen. Ontwikkelingen die de laatste tijd beschikbaar komen geven een antwoord op deze behoeften. Al een aantal jaren is het met de grote beschikbaarheid van grote bandbreedte via het internet heel goed mogelijk om (een deel van) een systeem buiten het eigen bedrijf te plaatsen. Een voorbeeld van deze ontwikkeling zijn de online diensten van Microsoft. Ricoh investeerd in deze ontwikkeling en brengt haar oplossingen naar deze online platformen. Naar verwachting zullen in hewt verlengde van de release van het Microsoft SharePoint 2010 platform 12 mei 2010 al vrij snel de online varianten beschikbaar komen.

Voor die bedrijven die graag van hun beheer af willen, maar de infrastructuur en de data binnen het eigenbedrijf willen houden is een appliance een oplossing. Een combinatie van server, software matige oplossingen en het beheer in één. Direct beschikbaar.

22 juni 2010 organiseerd Ricoh haar vierde seminar over SharePoint in het auditorium van Microsoft Nederland in Schiphol. Er zijn geen kosten verbonden aan deelname.

Microsoft Excecutive Briefing Center visit about 'Cloud' with a special event at the end: 'the ASHcloud'

2010-04-29T10:03:00.001+02:00

The 13th of April me and my collegue took a plane to Seattle. We planned our trip back to The Netherlands on the 18th. Well... The volcano 'Eyjafjallajökull' on Iceland changed the plans of a lot of people depending on the 'Cloud'. It took us some extra days to get back to Europe.

Cloud was the theme of the Microsoft Excecutive Briefing. Azure and BPOS. These developments at Microsoft are huge. Major investments in this area. Checkout the -We're All In- statement of Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer at his keynote at the University of Washington.

During this briefing the latest developments were unveiled. We had the opportunity to take a look at the investments in datacenters all over the world. More important is the evolution in the way the datacenters are build, a different level of utilizing 'flexponsive' computing and storage.

This is the layer 'Azure' is build on. Eventualy most of Microsofts products will be ported to this platform in the cloud. At this moment BPOS is not yet build on the Azure platform.

BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) is the name of the suite that includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting and Office Communications Online. This package with this terrible name has been given the code name 'Union' and will be rebranded. Expect this to happen at the WPC10 (Microsoft Worldpartner Conference) in Washington DC July this year.

The functionality set of Union is much, much more comprehensive than the functionality available now in BPOS. The first step is the launch of all wave14 developments (Exchange2010, Office2010, SharePoint2010 etc). One of the biggest complaints in the market (partners and customers) was the problem that the SharePoint part of BPOS lacked the possibility to be customized. Well you have some possibility's to make changes, but no custom code in the multi tennant BPOS environment. A single tennant environment (dedicated version) is available from 5000 seats. This is all going to change.

The pricing per seat per month has been changed since the introduction about a year ago. In the Netherlands you can have the functionality of a total set for just €8,52 pppm. So you get a Mailserver; a collaboration site where you can store your documents, share information etc; one can setup online conversations and even choose to do so if a person appears to be available (presence). Think of the infrastructure needed to build and maintain this in your own datacenter!

Collaboration - shifting mind set

2010-04-04T11:19:00.000+02:00

Collaboration is the essence of being an organization. Nothing new in having a common goal and working together to achieve that goal. Still in time there has been different mind sets in the way how this could or even should be organized.

Looking at the period that Taylor ruled (he still is in many cases in my opinion), organizations established a strict hierarchy where collaboration was enforced. In this structure there are goals and people are working together. But are these goals common?

Collaboration can't be compared with the definition we handle today. Working together has a broader meaning and a common goal means really share information to the extent of knowledge.

The strict hierarchy and the scientific study of tasks do not fit the purpose of shared goals and shared information. Organizations have to change to make collaboration successful. Move away from the detailed instructions and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task. This demands a collaboration mind shift, a change in how the organization is organized.

This doesn't just mean that the employee of the organization has to get used to share information, but more important management has a very important role in facilitating this change in cultural and social structure.

The biggest mind shift is the change in management style. Other competences are needed. Understand how to facilitate cooperation and how people are encouraged and motivated to contribute in the collaboration, how these people can take control over their work by being and acting responsible. Build trust.

Very often organizations forget this very important mind shift when introducing a new way of work based on collaboration. Often a tool is the first step, where it only should support the way in which the target is reached. Tools do have a purpose; they can lower or overcome barriers. For instance; collaborating between two people that do not work close together or even in another organization. They will not support the change of the organization.

SharePoint 2010 and NEN2082 BUZZ - vervolg

2010-03-19T10:08:00.000+01:00

Onlangs liet ik een BUZZ achter op deze BLOG over de prérelease implementatie van SharePoint 2010.

Inmiddels heeft QNH zelf gepubliceerd over deze implementatie bij de gemeente Nieuwegein. De ECB heeft implementatie in de praktijk getoetst volgens de Nederlandse Recordsmanagement norm NEN2082. Zoals Dick Marijnen van de ECB aangeeft een zeer waardevolle stap om substitutie mogelijk te maken.

SharePoint 2010 wordt 12 mei 2010 officieel released.

Met het hoofd in de wolken en de voetjes van de vloer

2010-03-13T10:12:00.001+01:00

ICT~Office. SaaS en Cloud seminar.

Afgelopen week (11 mrt 2010) heb ik het Seminar van ICT~Office bezocht waar het platform werd gegund aan twee grote spelers uit de wereld van de IT - Google en Microsoft. Voor Google was Erik de Muinck Keizer aanwezig. Microsoft had Peter de Haas afgevaardigd.
De ontwikkeling van SaaS en het begrip Cloud meer algemeen werd door de analist Jeffrey Mann vanuit Gartner 'perspectief' belicht.

Alle drie de sessies waren de moeite van het bekijken zeker waard, maar één issue is bij me rondblijven zingen tijdens de afgelopen dagen.

Security.

De vraag of bedrijven hun informatie aan de Cloud kunnen toevertrouwen is een altijd terugkerend onderwerp. De grote jongens die een rol spelen in Battle Zone Cloud (Microsoft, Google, Cisco en IBM - Jeffrey Mann, Gartner) nemen dit uitermate serieus als essentiële basis van hun proposities. Hoewel het vertrouwen vanuit de markt nog niet eindeloos is, lijkt het vertrouwen in de grondhouding van deze leveranciers ten aanzien van het onderwerp wel te groeien.

Opvallend.

Opvallend echter is dat Google licht laconiek omging met het issue. Toen het publiek daar Erik de Muinck Keizer op aansprak en refereerde naar het China incident van begin dit jaar startte hij zijn verweer wel door te zeggen dat hij die indruk niet had willen wekken en dat Google dit zeer serieus neemt. Echter in de toelichting hanteerde hij dezelfde argumenten als eerder in zijn betoog.

Bunker en bezemkast

Google heeft in de wereld een enorme capaciteit aan rekencentra staan. Deze voldoen aan zeer zware eisen. Een veel aangehaald certificaat de laatste tijd is de SAS70 certificering en dan wel de Type II.
De trajecten om te komen tot deze certificering zijn niet flauw en veel van de processen en maatregelen die getroffen zijn om deze certificering te bereiken worden niet zomaar openbaar gemaakt. Google hanteert hierin een heel gesloten beleid, zo merkt ook Gartner op. Ze laten niet eenvoudig in hun keuken kijken en dat beleid wordt ook meerdere malen door Erik de Muinck Keizer tijdens zijn verhaal en ook later in zijn toelichting expliciet vermeld.
Eén van de argumenten die wordt aangehaald is dat dit te maken heeft met het risico dat daarmee de certificering kan vervallen. Nu werp ik me niet als expert op als het gaat om de beveiliging en de exploitatie van rekencentra in het algemeen en SAS70 certificerings trajecten in het bijzonder. Wel ben ik al een aantal maal op bezoek geweest in zo'n bunker. Enfin. Prima dat Google dit beleid hanteert en voorzichtig is met de wijze waarop ze hun rekencentra en de beveiliging daarvan hebben ingericht. Ik heb daar geen moeite mee.
Minder plezierig voel ik me echter bij het gebruik van deze SAS70 certificering in een presentatie om te benadrukken dat een onpremise installatie van een applicatie nooit hetzelfde security niveau kan bereiken als een enterprise cloud oplossing vanuit een bunker. Eerlijk gezegd verwacht ik niet anders.
Als dan bovendien Google ook nog klaagt dat ze zich in negatieve zin in de picture spelen als er zich eens een keer een security incident voordoet, dat de pers daar massaal op springt. Wat verwacht je dan? Maar het wordt wel licht irritant indien je dan naar alle security incidenten op de zoemende pizzadozen in de bezemkast van de gemiddelde MKB'er of zelfs enterprise onderneming wijst. Nee, de pers maakt daar veel minder geluid over. Het incident op die schaal is echter in geen enkele verhouding met een security breach bij één van de ondernemingen die graag als megavendor in de Cloud Battle Zone gepositioneerd wordt door Gartner.

Het oordeel van Gartner

Gartner had de gelegenheid om de derde en laatste sessie op het podium te brengen. Daarin bracht Jeffrey Mann op een ontspannen manier overzicht aan in de battle zone en volwassenheid van de mega vendors volgens de analyse van Gartner. Daarin werd ondermeer Security implementation geduid als 'serious work needed' en is ook de service afspraken (SLA) naar de klant nog niet optimaal. Even later werd door Jeffrey Mann een aantal punten belicht die tot een doomscenario zouden kunnen leiden. Voor Google heeft Gartner een drietal punten in het kader van security en eigenlijk nog meer op het gebied van vertrouwen aangehaald.

Blocked access to information
Government regulation
Privacy and Trust crisis

Oef. Dit zijn serieuze bedreigingen indien je als pure Cloud speler de enterprise markt wil bestormen.

In de herkansing

Tot slot was het aan een panel om haar oordeel te geven en aan het publiek om vragen te stellen. De wijze waarop Erik de Muinck Keizer de opstelling t.a.v. security had overgebracht werd aan de kaak gesteld. Het China incident was daarbij het concrete vraagteken wat geplaatst werd. Een laconieke opstelling en wegwuiven van het probleem was de beschuldiging.
Beide partijen, Google en Microsoft kregen de gelegenheid om uitgebreid toelichting te geven. Helaas herhaalde Erik de Muinck Keizer zijn eerder aangehaald verweer. Een gemiste kans om met de voeten op de vloer te komen.

Het resultaat?

Het resultaat van deze opstelling is dat de indruk van een laconieke opstelling t.a.v. security enkel versterkt werd. Misschien zelfs arrogant ontkent of van de hand werd gewezen.

Tot Slot

Laat ik toch vooral duidelijk stellen dat ik geloof in de intentie die Google en ook de andere leveranciers in het speelveld het onderwerp security uiterst serieus nemen. Dat de ontwikkelingen op dit gebied enorm zijn, maar de aanpak van Google deze dag was niet handig te noemen.

De presentaties zijn door ICT~Office aan de aanwezige bezoekers verzonden. De slidedeck van Peter de Haas is zoals gewoonlijk ook in zijn slideshare te vinden. Die van Google die ontbrak tot nu toe, maar misschien dat deze nog volgt.

SharePoint 2010 and NEN2082 BUZZ

2010-03-11T08:28:00.000+01:00

During a prérelease SharePoint 2010 implementation a succesfull NEN2082 audit has completed. Last time the certification of SharePoint 2007 took till mid 2008.

I can not reveal the source nor the details about the case yet but... I expect this news will go public whitin a short period.

Launch new release SharePoint

2010-03-06T18:06:00.003+01:00

SharePoint 2010 was expected to be released in the first half of 2010. My estimate was somewhere in the period May - June. Microsoft did better than expected on this point.

On the site of Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog the official launch date of the 12th of May was anounced. Exiting, I agree.

The RTM will be released April, just before launch.

Cloud computing

2010-03-06T07:37:00.014+01:00

I started this blog triggered by the 'definition' of cloud computing that football coach Jack gave to explain his vision on -THE CLOUD-. Of course it is a Microsoft definition as an introduction of the speech Steve Balmer provided on the university.

I tried to watch this webcast once, but discovered I have to review this one again. To much of vision to absorb and process in one go. It is my way of thinking fast but lateral.

The cloud is a computing model where physical computers are abstracted in a way to enable people, whether they are at work or play, to have access to there data across devices. Interact with friends, families or colleagues, make better decisions and power the world businesses.

So? Like Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison my reaction could easy be saying: What are you talking about? Nothing changed! There are still servers, just lots of them! Well the change is not in this phyical server concept, but in there are other dimensions that are changing our world.

Dimensions

The cloud creates business opportunity's and responsibility

The cloud learns and helps you to learn, decide and take action

The cloud enhances your social and professional interactions

The cloud wants smarter devices

The cloud drives server advances that drives the cloud

Lots to think about. So I will split this into a series of blogs in the comming period. Thanks Steve for this framework. I'll try to explore it.

Warning?
Today 70% of Microsoft developers (40k) are involved in The Cloud. Within a year this will be 90%. We still have existing customers... The inspiration starts with the cloud.

Transcription

The Cloud? What are you talking about?

2010-02-16T15:02:00.005+01:00

THE CLOUD? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

Larry Ellison CEO Oracle

Erg leuk stukje waarin Larry Ellison de hype belachelijk maakt. Het is gewoon een device aan een database. Natuurlijk een waarheid als een koe, maar cloud omvat meer dan de fysieke infrastructuur.

Belangrijke toevoeging aan het begrip is het business model dat is opgebouwd. De keuze om een product of liever dienst af te nemen op basis van gebruik. Deze beweging zelf is ook al niet nieuw.

In de tijd dat electriciteit haar intrede deed in de industrie, bezat elke fabriek haar eigen energiecentrale. Overdag werd hier de energie opgewekt die voor de fabriek nodig was.
Edison vond de gloeilamp uit. Om deze te laten branden liet hij energie opwekken in een energiecentrale. Behoefte aan deze energie was er enkel in de avond. Edison bedacht dat het veel economischer zou zijn om energie vanuit enkele grotere centrales aan te bieden aan de fabrieken.

De ontwikkeling rondom elektriciteit heeft een belangrijke analogie met die van de 'cloud'. Fabrieken hebben in die tijd argwanend naar de energie van de gedeelde electriciteit centrale gekeken. Is dat wel betrouwbaar, is er altijd voldoende voor mij, misschien ook wel betaal ik niet voor mijn buurman? Datzelfde zien we nu ook gebeuren rondom 'cloud'. Vertrouwen is het grootste issue.

Dit is ook niet helemaal onterecht, denk aan het ongeluk in de Bommelerwaard een tijd terug waardoor een grote regio het een tijd lang zonder stroom moest stellen. Het wegvallen van het informatiesysteem is voor veel bedrijven een te grote onzekerheid die maakt dat 'cloud' nog niet volledig door de industrieën geadopteerd wordt.

Waar hebben we het dan over?

De technologie die voor het leveren van de dienst wordt ingezet, verschilt in essentie niet van die door bedrijven binnen hun eigen rekencentra wordt gebruikt. Het grote verschil is dat ondernemingen de keuze krijgen om de dienst op basis van gebruik af te nemen en zich kunnen concentreren op hun eigen kern activiteiten.

Het afnemen van opslag als een dienst, of rekenkracht nodig voor de verwerking van informatie als een dienst neemt langszaam wel toe. Afname van deze diensten met dezelfde vanzelfsprekendheid als stroom is nog toekomst, zeker indien het gaat om diensten die bedrijven als kritisch voor hun bedrijf onderkennen.

Dat deze vorm van aanbieden en afnemen van diensten groot potentieel bevat is duidelijk. Met het groeien van het aanbod en de volwassenheid van de dienst zullen de afnemers met meer vertrouwen en grote vanzelfsprekendheid langszaam, maar zeker een groter deel van de funties nodig voor hun informatiehuishouding uit de cloud gaan halen.

Is SharePoint ready to become an ECM platform?

2010-02-12T08:11:00.004+01:00

The success and broad adoption of SharePoint has been discussed a lot. Being at the top of the food chain means that the competition is looking at you. In the case of SharePoint it means that specialized products are equipped with a link and an explanation why these products add value to SharePoint.

The story often follows the same pattern. SharePoint is a good product and is adopted broadly but it lacks this or that functionality. Well of course it lacks functionality. Microsoft is good at leaving out functionality and providing a good basis to build on top. That's why lot of organizations has been able to become big and successful by concentrating on the added value of their specialized product and services.

Sometimes the atmosphere of the story becomes even hostile. The product of Microsoft cannot meet the expectation and leads to frustration of the organization. The field of DM and ECM is famous in these discussions.

In the first place SharePoint does provide in a lot but not all of the technology and functionality needed in an ECM platform. Organizations are invited to add functionality and value to the platform. The ISV and IT integrator communities are core of the business model of Microsoft.
Second designing and implementing a successful ECM function in an organization is manly not dependent of technology. Just a little while ago all this functions were imbedded in the organization and supported with paper based systems. They worked very well for a long time. One should ask themself if it's worthwhile to change that. To what extend?

Extracted from a whitepaper the next quote:
IT has learned through hard experience that if the functionality in a new application is not sufficiently rich to provide a compelling end-user benefit, users will not adopt it, instead sticking with whatever method was used in the past. In this light, it is significant that organizations attempting to automate document-centric processes with SharePoint typically encounter several limitations which arise from specific architectural and technical requirements of the platform and the way it is often deployed.

Thru, the way a platform is deployed, given its capability's and limitations in the light of architectural, technical or functional requirements will eventually determine the Return.

The fact SharePoint is deployed and used by companies to replace a file system is not in the first place a lack of functionality of the platform. It is however the choice of the organization itself how to use the platform. The choice itself maybe poor due lack of knowledge. How to choose from the broad functionality of the platform? Maybe a lack of experience with ECM is the most important reason.

ECM is an expertise field with underestimated complexity. When a process and people centric business and a technology centric IT department try to solve the business issues and are not able to address ECM, they probably will stick with a file system replacement.

Implementing ECM successfully is not (only) about the technology and functionality of the platform it is more about the maturity of the organization.

If the organization is able to address the ECM issues prior to the design of a system based on whatever platform the return will be more predictable. It is not technology that solves that business challenge.

Werken met Informatie

2010-02-07T11:20:00.000+01:00

De Information Worker (IW) is geworden tot een begrip. Een begrip echter die niet altijd door iedereen wordt begrepen of op dezelfde wijze wordt uitgelegd.

Tijdens de industriele revolutie veranderde het karakter van het werk dramatisch. Waar de thuis werker en de landarbeider hun ambacht hadden uitgeoefend bracht Taylor optimalisatie in de productie aan door deze op te knippen en door een lopende band naar de arbeider te brengen. Dit had een grote omslag in de werkplek en de inrichting van de dag tot gevolg. Tijd en plaats werden een gegeven een keurslijf waar de arbeider in geplaatst werd.
Na de introductie van computers en het ontstaan van werkzaamheden die gericht zijn op het verwerken van informatie is de aanpassing van de werkplek en de inrichting van de dag niet in gelijke tempo meegewijzigd. Nog steeds verzamelen veel mensen zich rondom de lopende band waar de informatie over wordt vervoerd en hebben bedrijven zich nog niet los kunnen maken van de fysieke plek waar deze wordt aangeboden en verwerkt.
In de ontwikkeling rondom het informatie intensieve werk, de informatie werker en de informatie werkplek schuild een enorm potentieel. De verandering brengt ook vragen en dilema's met zich mee. De prikklok cultuur heeft gezorgd voor een organisatie die gestuurd wordt door aanwezigheid en inspanning. Direct meten en sturen op resultaat vraagt om een andere mentaliteit. Niet alleen de informatie werker moet daar mee leren omgaan, maar vooral ook de manager moet leren om andere tools te hanteren.

Derde seminar SharePoint and Storage Ricoh succesvol

2010-01-22T11:45:00.005+01:00

Gisteren 21 januari 2010 heeft voor de derde maal het Ricoh seminar SharePoint en Storage plaats gevonden. Deze is als buitengewoon nuttig en plezierig ervaren door alle aanwezigen.

Daar waar het nieuwe werken geleefd wordt

De opzet van het seminar was deze keer wat anders. De eerste twee maal heeft deze plaatsgevonden in de inspirerende omgeving van Microsoft Nederland in Schiphol.

Vanwege het succes is er na het bekend maken van het event in september / oktober 2009 direct aangegeven dat er een tweede event georganiseerd zou worden. Helaas ;-) was ook dat niet voldoende om iedereen die interesse had (240 aanmeldingen) een plekje te garanderen. Daarop is besloten om onze (potentiele) partners in een derde sessie op ons hoofdkantoor in Den Bosch uit te nodigen.

Intieme opzet, intensief delen van informatie

In een groep van ca 20 mensen is een vol programma van presentaties en discussies doorlopen waarin Ricoh en partner ProAct zich als specialist hebben kunnen presenteren op het vlak van ECM, DM, SharePoint en Storage. De reacties van de aanwezigen (bijna 100% opkomst) hebben actief en enthousiast op de inhoud en de opzet van het event gereageerd.

In het programma zijn ondermeer onderwerpen als Het Nieuwe Werken, een inkijk naar SharePoint 2010, SharePoint producten van Ricoh als Ricoh Document Store en SharePoint@Once en tot slot Storage behandeld.

Ricoh Document Store (RDS) en SharePoint@Once maken snelle en robuuste implementatie van Document Mangement functionaliteit in een SharePoint omgeving mogelijk, met minimale inspanning. RDS wordt geleverd binnen de omgeving van de klant of kan volledig zonder zorgen met een appliance geleverd worden. De oplossing op de appliance is samen met StartReady ontwikkeld.

Brilliant concept developments on datacenter enginering

2009-11-02T19:39:00.005+01:00

Last summer I went to a Excecutive Briefing at the Microsoft EBC in Redmond. The this 3 day meeting handled about Microsoft moving to online services or cloud services. Probably you heard about the intentions of Microsoft and maybe you heard about names like BPOS and Azure.
For me, I was mainly interested in the online concepts and the business opportunity's. One of the issues on the agenda was about datacenters. Ofcourse, this is the hardware infrastructure needed to make the cloud possible was my first impression. Also a lot of datacenter guys joint us to the EBC. What surprised me was the way datacenter concepts developed and the way engineering and thinking about energy and sustainability lead to the modern datacenter architectures.

Take a look at this video for a few of those implemented concepts.

video Chicago datacenter

Met de uitrol van de Ricoh Document Store op een appliance, levert Ricoh haar oplossing op een basis voor - Software and Services -

2009-08-04T10:58:00.002+02:00

De appliance waarop Ricoh haar Ricoh Document Store (RDS) levert kan enerzijds gezien worden als een vehicel om de software te leveren bij de klant. De appliance is in conceptuele zin echter veel meer. Het is een platform, een basis van waaruit een grote hoeveelheid van functionaliteiten geboden kan worden.
StartReady, de leverancier van de appliance en de partner van Ricoh waarmee samen een software distribution layer in de appliance is gebouwd legt uit:

StartReady biedt Microsoft OCS als een appliance. Wensing: “Het is een combinatie van Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) en een lokaal geïnstalleerde (on premise) oplossing. De hard- en software installeren we bij de klant, maar we bieden Microsoft OCS als managed service aan. In tegenstelling tot
volledige SaaS-diensten kun je dit wel makkelijk integreren in de rest van je infrastructuur. Tegelijkertijd bied je bedrijven de voordelen van SaaS, zoals een snelle implementatie en betalen via een vast bedrag per maand in plaats van een forse eenmalige investering.

bron: artikel TAMTAM

In het voorbeeld van het artikel is het product wat geleverd wordt Office Communication Server (OCS). Ricoh biedt met RDS een op SharePoint gebaseerde document -en dossiermanagement platform dat geïntegreerd is met de Multi Functionele Printers (MFP). Sinds lange tijd heeft Ricoh de middelen om deze (en nu dus in combinatie) te leveren tegen een bedrag op basis van afname van de dienst, zonder investering.

BING BING BING

2009-07-30T21:21:00.002+02:00

Yahoo Search and Microsoft BING together. One year and a half ago at the Microsoft SharePoint conference in Seattle there was a big rumor. Microsoft bought FAST search technology and wanted to take over Yahoo.

Now you can't mis the news that was anounced (or leaked) on this years Microsoft World Partner Conference in New Orleans. Microsoft will take over the Search activities of Yahoo.

On the SharePoint conference last year Zia Zamann of FAST explained a bit about the marketshare of Microsoft, FAST, Google and Yahoo. Very interesting to see where Microsoft wanted to go with the strategy on search and the enormous marketshare when comparing the big Google on this issue against this upcomming Microsoft searuc prop.

Steve Ballmer was very clear about the Microsoft intentions the next 18 mounth. 'we will be comming, comming and comming till we got it right - BOOM' Therefore Microsoft is investing a HUGE amound of money into development.

Ricoh and Golf - just fun

2009-07-30T20:35:00.003+02:00

On youTube a few video's explain the golf strokes.

Hard Surface

Water Shot

Chip Shot

Ricoh succesvol met Microsoft SharePoint en Ricoh Document Store

2009-07-30T19:39:00.003+02:00

Voor de meeste bedrijven is een periode van relatieve rust aangebroken. Juist in deze periode lukt het Ricoh om de propositie Slim Samenwerken met een concrete invulling van de Ricoh Document Store succesvol in de markt te positioneren.
Key in dit traject is de focus en volharding gebleken. Vooral het opstellen van een heldere roadmap is een belangrijk handvat gebleken. De verankering in het businessmodel en het distributiemodel maakt de keuzen in de roadmap voor iedereen herkenbaar. Het maken van een heldere en consistente keuze leidt uiteindelijk tot succes, ook op het moment dat de handel stil lijkt te vallen.
Inmiddels zijn er in heel korte tijd een flink aantal deals gesloten waarin Ricoh Document Store een centrale rol speelt. Het aanbieden van de oplossing in een gedifferentieerd distributie kanaal is hier vol benut: RDS on premise (in eigen infrastructuur) en in een lease constructie, de keuze voor de appliance in het eigen netwerk en de appliance, maar dan gehost (dus als een ASP model) en ook gefinancierd.
Medio september zal RDS2.0 gereleased worden en drie solutions templates beschikbaar komen: postkamer, factuur distributie en leerling dossier. De laatste is gebaseerd op het dossiermanagement framework en als verticale oplossing in onderwijs ingericht.
Het volgende release slot is inmiddels grotendeels gepland en voor invulling van de roadmap zijn de workshops met de segmenten gestart. Deze toetsing vindt niet enkel intern, maar vooral ook met het gezicht naar buiten plaats. Op naar het volgende gezamelijke succes!

Ricoh Document Store is een concept waarin de intelligente multifinctionele devices geintegreerd worden met een platform gebaseerd op Microsoft SharePoint. De appliance maakt een zeer snelle en stabiele implementatie mogelijk. De appliance maakt bovendien het afnemen van beheerdiensten mogelijk.

New Orleans ##Microsoft #WPC09 ended

2009-07-17T18:36:00.003+02:00

My intention was to put a little piece of my experiences to this blog about every day. The conference ended yesterday. Today only Business Feed back session from the Dutch Microsoft ecosystem in New Orleans. I couldn't attend this one because my flight is leaving soon now.
So I did not manage to put something here everyday, but the good thing is that time wasn't simply there. To much going on at the conference itself and in the evenings even more. Unfortunately the connection in the convention center was not good enough.

Very well were the keynotes of he Microsoft executives as I wrote earlier on. Tree days of keynotes that were intersting to listen to, inpiring and the content was of high quality too.

Now on the Louis Armstrong Int Ariport in New Orleans (connecting on a free conection with better quality than in the NO convention center)I have a little time to overthink the past days.

The New Orleans #Microsoft #wpc09 started

2009-07-13T21:09:00.002+02:00

Today the Microsoft World Partner Conference in New Orleans started with a good breakfest at the convention center.

After some Microsoft warmpup the session of Allison Watson kicked the conference off. She was followed by Stephen Elop and Bill Veghte. So what's new? Allison launched the new Microsoft Partner Program. Looks like a lot of new tools. On first side there are some nice opportunity's to expand business. I'm afraid though that these tools are not as straight forward as shown. I expect them to be a lot beter and more usefull.

Stephen Elop showed a bit of the products that will be launched shortly and demonstrated some feautures of Office 2010 (we all get an technical preview invitation for it), Microsoft Online products like BPOS and also the SharePoint 2010 platform.
Elop is convinced that 90% of our customers will ask us to help them develop an Software and Services strategy within 12 months. The products are designed to support that, that's for sure.

The part of Bill was about Windows 7. It's not my core interest but it promises to be a hell of a lot better than vista. One partner told the story that he had to down grade customers after delivering Dell hardware to Windows XP. Now so has to be expected not only Windows 7 will be provided with new hardware in the way it used to work, but according to Microsoft also a lot of hardware in the installed based can be upgraded to Windows 7.

Microsoft is aiming on bigger deals in this changing world. They even named a figure of 16% a deal bigger. I wonder on what facts they based this 16%. I understand the opportunity to take advantage of the level of integration of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010, the opporunity to add collaboration and communication to propositions. I however can't put numbers to it. We'll see.

9000 visitors on this event from 125 country's. That's about 40% less than last year. Still a lot of people. With 250 of them The Netherlands is the biggest group after the US itself.

Let's collor this event orange! Tonight the dutch partner reception. A lot of business friends are here. Look forward to meet them too.

Exploring New Orleans 3 - #wpc09

2009-07-13T20:58:00.003+02:00

Yesterday after registering at the wpc09 I went back to the hotel. Glad to be able to take a shawer and rest a bit. I wanted to walk down the Missisipi, but from the busstop to the river wa a little tricky.The road is running over the convention center, or a long walk around it. It was far to hot to do that.

So I enjoyed the rest and planned to meet with a few partners and Microsofties to get some food in de evening.

At 7pm we met all in the Marriott at Canal St drank a beer and went of to grab a cow in a steakhouse. Boy what a big chunk they serve overthere.New Orleans is Hot, that is outside the buildings. Inside you need to keep moving to prevent freezing to your chair.

Maybe it's a smart idea to spent a little less to cooling down the buildings, that way going outside is a little less a problem.

After diner half of the group went for a little walk to Bourbon St. Me myself went with the group that taak a few beers in the hotel lobby.

Exploring New Orleans 2

2009-07-12T20:38:00.002+02:00

This morning is well spent exploring a little of New Orleans. Just a day to do so and I choose to get on the bus and hunt for a treasure in New Orleans City Park. The street car is out of order for two months. That would have been better, but the alternative suits the purpose.
I went to cementery near City Park. On my way to the hotel in the ariport shuttle I spotted the graveyard. It was a big collection of little houses. A special place.
The bellman at the hotel asked me what my goal for today was. Walking and exploring New Orleans was my answer. He warned me to take enough water with me (or bear, but that was not a very good idea). It was very hot indeed and I was glad that I took two bottles with me.
The city park is a nice place. A little bit a swamp, think about those southern america films with the sounds that goes with it. I found the geocache grand entrance and went back to the hotel, took a shower and drank a lot of water.
Ready for the next event, goning to register for the wpc09 I guess.

Exploring New Orleans

2009-07-12T14:53:00.004+02:00

Today wake up at about 6:30 am. Not bad for a jetlag. Slept quit allright. Had a little fight with setting the right temprature for the airco and wake up a few times.

This morning try to relax a little, write some stuff, plan the day and take a look at the programm of this week Microsoft World Partner Conference. First some coffee on the hotel room and ofcourse a refill, this is the US.

Weather report makes me worry a bit. Hot and change rain will hit New Orleans. Bad combination I figure. Today 90 degrees Fahrenheit and probably a lot of moisture.

For funn I'am planning on a geocaching trip. Have to do this today, I do not want to take them back again.

Business trip New Orleans

2009-07-12T13:38:00.004+02:00

Yesterday was travel day. The trip Amsterdam to New Orleans contains a transit. I choose to travel on Houston and a little hour flight from Houston to New Orleans. The trip from Amsterdam was quit bumpy. No very big turbulence, but a long time more than usual. That is more than I expected and got use to the last trips to the US.

At the Amsterdam airport almost everryone was trying to get in one plane. Glad I was not on the SunExpress! Besides the bumps it was a flight as all others, to long and borring, even with the old bat flight attendents (where are those young lady's still dreaming help us travelers in these aire busses?).

After a few times US I'm used to the madness at imigration and customs. Just do not pay attention and follow orders while standing in line. This time in Houston We sensed the heat despite of airco's. Some 100 degrees, that's F.

Getting on the plane was special to. We had to walk to the continental gates for the flight to New Orleans, way on the other side of the airport. We got there just in time. Than when boarding, they opend a backdoor and the heat hit us. Again a short walk - outside - to a little 'bus'. We tried to get in and bearly managed it.

The trip to New Orleans was a short one, less than an hour. New Orleans was HOT. Finding a shuttle took us another hour. You know we make jokes about public servants. How many people needed to dig a hole? Well, here they needed 5 people to get us in the shuttle! One pointing out the way to get our tickets, one to open the door and put our bags in the shuttle, one to collect the tickets we just bought, one to drive, one to navigate for him... madness.

At the hotel everything fine JW Marriott on Canal st in the CBD (Central Business Deistrict) just a block from French quarter and two from Bourbon st. I called some guys here in New Orleans visiting the WPC and we made an appointment for dinner 7:30 pm CT.

After a shower I went to the hotel bar to drink a couple of Corona's and went of to get some stuff for the kids. Afterwards I had to experience Bourbon st. A lot of things going on there! No Mardi Gras but I spotted the Beads and the tits. Bear on the street (take away)and the Hustler sex shop crowded with family's. Weird this is the US too.

I met Lucas, Nils and Nelson at the cornor af Bourbon and Canal. We had some nice seafood dinner. 10:30pm time to go back to the hotel. But first again a short look on Bourbon. Well it was crowded, people dancing on the street, lot's of drinks on the street, beads and tits and live music everywhere.

Enough for one day. Finaly around midnight - nighty night.

Microsoft World Partner Conference 2009

2009-07-10T16:14:00.005+02:00

So I almost finished packing. That is I try to pack only the most important things, i.e. nothing. Wondering, should I pack all of my stuff in just one little backpack? It's only a week New Orleans.
Got a new Backpack. Last time Seattle bought a new nice small Asus EEE. The BIG laptop backpack is handy, but a little heavy. I do not need the extra weight of the protection for my little partner. Lots of clothes I do not need. It's a business trip to the Microsoft WPC09 but, casual and it's hot in New Orleans.

Again a long flight to The States. I took a few travel bugs with me. For those who care: GEOCACHING. A nice way to 'hire' a local guide in a foreign city.

I'll travel with a business friend and I expect to meet some more along the way. First apointment in New Orleans: Diner with Lucas and Nils. We want to make clear to the Dutch Ecosystem what the nice Ricoh - StartReady aliance adds to the Microsoft technology based propositions. We will post you on that matter.

Ricoh Launches Visual Online Storage Service quanp

2009-06-30T20:45:00.003+02:00

Quantum Paper

Sometimes you have to simply promote a development from your own compagnie. #Ricoh is a worldwide marketleader in IT solutions. Ricoh is famous for it's multi functional devices but that does not cover the innovative IT solutions in it's portfolio.

QUANP... Rings a bell? Just an example of those innovative solutions.

Records Management lives in a mixed world

2009-05-30T07:42:00.011+02:00

A few days ago I wrote a little piece on Records Management and SharePoint. SharePoint is recognized as a platform that can be configured to fulfill the function as an archive as described in the NEN 2082 Standard (Dutch).

The audit against the standard has been performed by the European Certification Bureau.

Last week I attended at a session where Rubicon demonstrated the standard available functionalities on Document Management that SharePoint provides. The second topic in this session was Rcords Management, SharePoint and the NEN2082 accreditation. For this reason Dick Marijnen from the ECB attended the session to explain a little about the standard and the impact of the standard on documents.

The session was no deep dive into the subject, but only a short introduction. Striking is the assumption in these kind of sessions that a document is still assumed to be 'a piece of text in a digital form'. Say a word document.

In my opinion two major complexities are unexposed:

What is a document?

What is the format of a document?

An document in the historical explanation is a piece of paper with a text or some drawings. Today we are looking in a total different way to a document. It can be a text with some drawing, but also a video or a recording. More complex is when documents are related and combined. For example a set of documents or a text document or a power point presentation with multi media content like an embedded video. About 20 years ago you had to go to a library to look up a document and a related video, go to a video player and so on... It's all there on our fingertips now.
One step further these documents never come alone, there is a reason why they are there. Related documents are dossiers and some of these documents are related to more than one dossier.

If this content is essential for you, your department and later the company or society it becomes a 'record'. Of course this is a VERY simple explanation. Think about it this way. When a document that you produced becomes very important for your company, it is very difficult to find, retrieve and maintain the record if it is located on your hard disk or in your drawer.
When digital, that is the starting-point of the concept of an application providing Records Management support, this will become much easier. True in lot's of ways, but look around. Look around in your own office. Take a look at your desk, think of the way you perform your tasks. Do you use paper during this process? What happens with it? So how digital are we? Or are we still dependent of paper, at least for a part of our life?
I do believe we live in a mixed world of paper and digital content and this is what makes Records Management complex. You can not ignore paper flowing through your organization. Yes you can digitize it as a kind of a remedy. And systems will be able to support the process better. But for the time being Records Management lives in a mixed world.

Hij koemt, hij koemt...

2009-05-28T21:51:00.004+02:00

Al enige tijd staat het in de hoek van de Search technologie bol van de geruchten. Microsoft komt met een nieuwe Search engine. Intern bij Microsoft staat deze bekend onder de naam KUMO. Ook al lang geen geheim meer is het feit dat deze search engine onder een andere naam het levenslicht zal zien.

De keuze van Microsoft lijkt op de naam BING gevallen te zijn. Gaan we nu bingen ipv googlen? Het zal er om gaan spannen.

Het tipje van de sluier wat Microsoft oplicht geeft een kleine blik op de technologie. Wat opvalt is dat de resultaten veel 'rijker' zijn dan bij Google het geval is. Zie ik hier de inbreng van FAST?

Invention vs Innovation

2009-05-26T06:11:00.003+02:00

About a month ago now Tim Hyer placed a BLOG on Innovation vs Invention (Cheskin). It was about a discussion with Peter E Hart and is innovation consultants of Ricoh Innovations.

invention "creates something new in the world," while innovation "captures value from invention."

I agree with the outcome of the discussion and the different level of complexity between invention and innovation. But still without the fish learning to fish makes no sense. The fact these two are related makes the total proces of development complex. Succes not only depends on the invention itself but als on the immagination neede to understand the value.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 en Recordmanagement

2009-05-25T11:18:00.004+02:00

NEN 2082 is enige tijd geleden als norm geaccepteerd. NEN 2082 beschrijft de eisen die aan een systeem gesteld worden om voor recordmanagement gebruikt te mogen worden.

of zoals de norm zelf in de titel pagina aangeeft: Eisen voor functionaliteit van informatie- en archiefmanagement in programmatuur.

SharePoint had al een belangrijke audit op dit vlak doorstaan. De amerikaanse defensie stelt op een gelijke wijze eisen aan een systeem en de norm die daarvoor is opgesteld staat model voor een aantal afgeleide normen in Europa en uit eindelijk ook de NEN norm.

Er is wel een kanttekening te maken bij deze certificering. De certificering geldt voor het platform SharePoint (MOSS 2007), maar enkel in combinatie met de zogenaamde DOD 5015 pack.
Een goed recordmanagement is niet eenvoudig en om tot een goed systeem te komen moeten vooral ook aspecten als organisatie, gebruik en beheer meegenomen worden. Dat maakt dat de implementatie ook niet zomaar door iedere implemantatie partner uitgevoerd kan worden.

Certificering volgens NEN 2082 is uitgevoerd door het ECB

Education - does the ability for students to access work and applications from anywhere make sense?

2009-05-22T15:49:00.005+02:00

...on 21th of may 2009 Christopher Dawson - technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts wrote:

...it does make a lot of sense for students to be able to access their work and applications from anywhere. Whether they are home sick and simply need to get their homework turned, they lack the resources for a computer of their own, or their schools are looking for a cost-effective way to deliver a standardized desktop with minimal hardware investment...

In his example he is relating the fact of being ill to the ability to still follow lessons. Chris states it is ofcourse an example and not the main reason to use this technology to accomplish the final goal, but still it is usefull. The technology presents a way to respond on these kind of events.

Cloud computing is NOT the holy grail, but a way to fit education to the demands of the future.

Cloud computing in education - does it make sense?

2009-05-22T14:35:00.004+02:00

We all like to believe (me and my tech friends) today technology will move to the cloud. The future is cloud shaped. Services, functionality today on our PC or laptop (oh sorry PDA) will be available in the cloud. So no matter where you are and on what time you 'arrive' there, IT will be available.
The tech site of the story has become reality today. However what does it take to help the teachers to take advantage of the technology? Does this inside - out story fit the demands? What are the disadvantages of this development?

Well I do believe it fits more than just the demand, but it will support a future development and a vision on how to deliver education and support learning. Not only it will deliver the content to the student or enable the ability to share mutual content. It will be available to a much broader public. So not only your ideas will be available, but also the brilliant ideas of your colleague can help your students to understand the subject.
Teachers ask themselfs how to envolve the student and her or his parents in the proces. It is a harsh proces to keep a student on the right track without the support of the parents. When a program, the content or the way of communication does not fit the experience of a student he will drift away. But without the understanding of this complexity of the parents it is even harder to accomplish. So keep the parents envolved.
Is using this technology in education necessary? Does it make sense to take content to the cloud, even avoid direct contact? Isn't it a disadvantage to contact each other via internet?

NO we can not afford to ignore direct contact and meeting physical. We do need that personal touch and contact to teach and to learn. Still I do believe the technologie will support the goal and help the fit of the way content is presented to students and shared amongst teachers.

Responsibility

2009-05-15T22:33:00.003+02:00

Whenever you decide to start something you've to take care of the consequences. So Ruth showed me in the simple comment on this BLOG.

'I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often'

In my own opinion it wasn't so special, and this is still my believe. When however people care you become Responsible.

So I decided to publish more often, thank you Ruth.

House of the future at the Microsoft Campus - an impressioin

2009-05-15T22:08:00.005+02:00

Short impression of the house of the future at the Microsoft Campus. I've been there March 2009 visiting an EBC. Some very interesting technologies and implementations - not even this far of reality.

File vrije dag in Nederland

2008-10-09T18:21:00.002+02:00

Het was gezellig!

Sepp Moos - nieuws uit de huiskamer

2008-10-05T15:02:00.002+02:00

Steeds meer spelen mobiele devices een rol in publiceren berichten. Daar waar chat in de eerste jaren als speelgoed is bestempeld en steeds meer voor professioneel gebruik wordt ingezet is deze beweging ook te zien in de dagboekje nieuwe stijl. Zo'n beetje elke applicatie die online diensten aanbiedt geeft ook de mogelijkheid om deze content in een blog te publiceren.
Of het nu gaat om Blogger (Google), Hyves, MSN live (Microsoft), Facebook (Yahoo) of bijvoorbeeld Flicker. Allemaal geven de mogelijkheid om dientsten te combineren en de resultaten te publiceren. Dat deze beweging in de laatste jaren steeds mee serieus genomen wordt is ook wel terug te vinden in de aanwezigheid van Reuter, CNN of bijvoorbeeld een BBC news, allen afkomstig uit de oude media tussen dit geweld. Ook uit andere media verzorgende groepen als een Kodak (ja die vasthielden aan het rolletje met lichtgevoelige film) laten zich zien.
Nu er een steeds serieuzere beweging te zien is waar publicatie vanuit de mobiele devices ontstaat (denk aan spraakmakende foto's van de excecutie van Sadam, of filmpjes van de mishandeling van een minder begaafde jongen) wordt de overgang, maar ook de scheidslijn tussen nieuws uit de huiskamer en wereldnieuws steeds dunner.
Eerder zou ik gezegd hebben dat we er nog niet zijn met de mobile als computer. Steeds meer echter wordt het mogelijk deze apparaten in te zetten als een vanzelfsprekende combinatie van foto toestel, filmcamera, voicerecorder en tekstverwerker. Meteen publiceren in een zelf uitgegeven of door wereldwijd verspreide verslaggevers die gezamelijk het nieuws brengen is een feit. Als geïnteresseerd lezer abonneer je je meteen op het nieuws van de dag, afgestemd op de locatie waar je je bevindt. Eerder zei ik was het apparaat nog niet klaar, maar de feiten liggen daar. Wereld nieuws komt uit de telefoon.

Privacy en openbaarheid

2008-09-16T23:49:00.003+02:00

Privacy en openbaarheid

Een eerste vinger oefening rondom dit onderwerp. Aanleiding is een vraag die me is gesteld om een artikel te schrijven rondom het spanningsveld tussen privacy en openbaarheid. Een interessant praktijk voorbeeld kwam ik enige tijd geleden tegen rondom de zaak Stoker. Opgelicht! had hier aandacht aan besteed.
Ondanks dat alle zaken rondom dit illuster individu bekend waren bij justitie was het politie korps in Amsterdam niet instaat om deze op het moment waarop dat noodzakelijk was paraat te hebben. Onbegrip bij de aanwezigen en vooral de gedupeerde van deze oplichter. Echter deze 'tekortkoming' is niet zozeer te wijten aan de kennis en vaardigheden van het korps in Amsterdam, maar wel aan de structuur waarin de gegevens over deze zaken zijn opgeslagen. Kan dat dan niet anders. Ja. Technisch is het ongetwijfelt anders in te richten en wel zodanig dat alle systemen die daar toegang toe moet hebben uit kunnen putten.
Waarom is dit dan niet op deze wijze georganiseerd en ingericht? Jaren geleden al las ik een artikel dat er landelijk een database ingericht was waarin gegevens van procesverbalen op landelijk niveau opgeslagen werden. Het artikel was relatief technisch van aard, maar naast deze technische uitleg werd in het artikel ook stilgestaan bij de keerzijde van de centrale databank. De toegang zo werd nadrukkelijk gesteld was goed afgeschermd
Allemaal technische insteek waar aan een aantal maatschappelijke ontwikkelingen en uiteindelijk ook juridische maatregelen aan ten grondslag liggen. Vooral de maatschappelijke reactie op openbaarheid en de concequentie op de pricacy worden regelmatig in het nieuws naar voren gebracht. Denk aan de discussie over de databank die in Engeland voor iedereen beschikbaar is om na te gaan waar in de buurt veroordeelde pedofielen wonen. Een aardige mashup op google maps, maar is het ook maatschappelijk wenselijk om deze privacy grens te overschrijden? De meningen lopen uiteen.

Sharepoint en engineering document management CADAC

2008-05-07T07:20:00.003+02:00

Nieuwe versie van Organice 2004 R3

Computable bracht een artikel van de nieuwe versie van Organice. Een op Sharepoint technologie gebasseerde document beheer omgeving toegespitst op de maak industrie.

Cadac Group is reeds talloze jaren actief op het gebied van data management en archivering, met name voor projectmatig werkende bedrijven in de ontwerp- en maakindustrie. Cadac Group maakt hierbij primair gebruik van web technologie van Microsoft, te weten Windows SharePoint Services (WSS).

De Cadac Group brengt een nieuwe versie van Organice 2007 R3 op de markt. Deze release biedt verschillende nieuwe mogelijkheden en verbeteringen in Organice Explorer en Organice Transmit. Organice is een software suite voor engineering document management en document control, en is volledig gebaseerd op Microsoft SharePoint.

Met Organice 2007 R3 wordt Organice Explorer, de Windows desktop client die het werken met Microsoft SharePoint sterk verbeterd en ondersteunt het volledig Microsoft Windows Vista Business (32 én 64-bits) en AutoCAD 2009 (32 én 64-bits), dat in maart 2008 door Autodesk is geïntroduceerd. Verder ondersteunt het RealDWG 2009 voor het beheren van DWG files met SharePoint. Autodesks RealDWG zorgt voor integratie met AutoCAD en is volledig compatibel met andere Autodesk-producten. lees verder...

Toverdoosjes

2008-03-29T20:46:00.000+01:00

Toverdoosjes

Eerder al toonde ik mijn bewondering voor een klein toverdoosje van ASUS de UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) met de naam R2H. In de aanloop naar kleiner van een aantal jaar terug geloofde ik nog niet in een alles in één apparaat voor iedereen. Naar mijn mening zal het ook nog even duren voordat we dit bereikt hebben.

Nog steeds houden de producenten van de apparaten meerdere ballen omhoog. Wat gaat de doorslag geven? Snelheid, mobiliteit (wat ìs mobilieit - GSM, WIFI, BT, GPS of een karretje), integratie (van wat) of is het plat gezegd wat weegt het ding want ik moet het allemaal mee sjouwen.

Een voorbeeld van twee pda's (wikipedia)

Het lijkt een beetje wachten op de komt van de nieuwe technologie, de doorbraak. Welke doorbraak is niet altijd duidelijk. Het heeft te maken met één van de ballen. Veel gehoord in combinatie met de fantastische iPhone van Apple is bandbreedte en vooral beschikbaarheid van deze bandbreedte.

Rusisch blingbling exemplaar van 120.000 dollar met 138 diamantjes

De ontwikkelingen gaan snel, of eigenlijk sneller. Vergis je niet de eerste ontwikkelingen naar deze mobiliteit zijn al even gaande. De eerste mobiele telefoon bijvoorbeeld (Nederland) was er al in 1939.

Carvox 2453

In 1985 wordt naast het bestaande net een tweede autotelefoonnet in dienst gesteld (ATF-2) met een capaciteit van 15000 abonnees. Het werkt naast ons land ook in België en Luxemburg. Er komen nieuwe toestellen de Carvox 2451 en 2452, en ook deze zitten nog steeds gemonteerd in de auto. (Museum voor Communicatie)

De meeste mensen hadden toen nog geen vaste telefoon! Die ontwikkeling van de moderne communicatiemiddelen werd eerst in 1876 door Bell uitgevonden. Bijna 65 jaar om deze twee technologieën samen te brengen.

Geduld is een schone zaak. Maar toch enkel bewondering voor de apparaatjes. Ze zijn snel en klein, integreren alles wat denkbaar is.

Het kleine toverdoosje van ASUS wordt aangeduid als een UMPC. Een klein computertje, of een verrekt kleine klapdoos. Er is ook al concurentie aangekondigd. Een ander produkt van ASUS is de EEE PC. Diverse artikelen (1, 2, 3, ...)beschikbaar en veel besproken. Een belofte of anders geeft de aandacht voor deze dwerg toch aan dat ASUS een gevoelige snaar heeft geraakt. Zo ontstaat er ook concurrentie (Elonex, GeCube) en begint ook de zoektocht naar de juiste prijs.

Nog wat termen

UMPC

Wat is dat dan een umpc? Kort gezegd is het een complete pc in een handzaam formaat, zonder vast toetsenbord en muis. Eigenlijke een soort mini tablet-pc of een maxi-pda. Wel draait er een volwaardige versie van Windows XP op en wel de tablet-pc editie, die ondersteuning biedt aan peninvoer.

Seattle - The community is roaring

2008-03-04T15:07:00.001+01:00

The community is roaring

You could have expected a storm of reactions in blogs, wiki's, forums etc. And of course there are people who are enthusiastic and there are some rumors. The critics posted are not only about organisation (Mark Miller for instance), but also about what the Microsoft Marketing Machine is trying to tell the world (Michael Sampson).

The MS Sharepoint Conference in Seattle at the state convention & trade center is just one day old and there are a lot of people here. Some are very critical about the number of people registered. Personally I did not experience this problem of overcrowded sessions. I hope it will stay that way for me.

More interesting critics are those who trying to question that what is said by Microsoft about Sharepoint. As stated by Michael Sampson for instance, what was Bill Gates talking about in his keynote.

"Breaking the milestone of 100 million licenses sold and surpassing sales of $1 billion this year, SharePoint is helping customers solve their most pressing information management needs."

Is it true that already 100 million licenses are sold? I do like to think that this is true. Are 100 million people using it already. No I do not think so. But by putting these two tings in one sentence leaves you the opportunity to think so. Even to think that this is the holy grail.

Michael has a point when he is writing in his blog that Sharepoint is slipped in the platform rather than sold to solve the business pains. So it is hard to believe this is THE business driver, or the only business driver.

On the other hand I do not think this Trojan horse is a bad platform, not capable to solve a lot of problems. It has been smart to slip it in and yes marketing of Microsoft is successful in selling the dream of the holy grail. But still there are opportunities. We can leave them there if we do not believe in them, but still. We are here in Seattle with about 4000 professionals from all over the world.

This holy grail thing is also used on the engineers who are exposed to all this 'good stuff'. It is all easy, very fast, out of the box or even better OOB. It is hard to stay on the ground, not to take the story for granted.

So that's our job at this Sharepoint conference. Think about what Microsoft and partners are telling you. Keep your own experience in mind and ask yourself is this a holy grail or a Trojan horse? Is this a opportunity or a hoax? Can I be creative with it, fill some of the needs?

And do not forget, have some fun to!

Third day in Seattle - Keynote Bill Gates

2008-03-04T07:37:00.006+01:00

Start MS Sharepoint Server 2007 conference - Seattle

3 Maart 2008 de eerste dag MOSS 2007 conferentie start 's ochtends met een keynote van Bill Gates (en vrienden - Tom Rizzo, John Betz ea.). Inhoudelijk niet heel spectaculair, althans als je met hoge verwachtingen naar een conferentie afreist. De aanwezigheid van Gates heeft die hoop ook aangewakkerd.

De conferentie blijft niet helemaal verstoken van nieuwtjes, maar wel steken bij geruchten en uitspraken die al een tijd de ronde doen: Bijvoorbeeld het onderstaande bericht geeft weer wat Bill Gates over de Microsoft ambities heeft verteld rondom Sharepoint Online.

REDMOND, Wash. — March 2, 2008 — Monday from the annual Microsoft Office SharePoint Conference, Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., will announce that the company will offer Microsoft Online Services to businesses of all sizes. This announcement marks a significant step for Microsoft toward expanding its software plus services strategy.

“The combination of software plus services gives customers advanced choice and flexibility in how they access and manage software,” Gates said. “With Microsoft Online Services, businesses can deploy software as a subscription service, from servers they manage on-site, or a combination of the two, depending on their specific needs. In the future, customers and partners should expect to see this kind of choice and flexibility for all of Microsoft’s software and server products.”

Today Microsoft also opened a limited beta trial of the new services; U.S.-based companies can register for the trial at http://www.mosbeta.com. The new services are scheduled to be generally available to businesses of all sizes in the second half of the year. Lees verder...

Een aantal kernwoorden uit de keynote van Bill and friends:

Sharepoint Online - Cloud Platform
Search

Mmmhhh Niet spectaculair. Later meer.

Second day in Seattle

2008-03-04T07:30:00.002+01:00

Seattle

Op de tweede dag in Seattle de tourist uitgehangen. Zondag in een 24x7 economie was even wennen. Althans een beetje jet lagged had ik het toch niet in de gaten. 2 Maart een fiets gehuurd en vanuit Down town Seattle een rondje rond het meer gemaakt.
Zo vanaf de fiets veel kunnen zien van de omgeving. Fantastisch weer, veel mede fietsers op de weg en Amerikaanse gezinnetjes in het park. Day well spent. Het was de moeite waard. Hoewel... Het was al even geleden dat ik mijn fiets de sporen gaf en dat heb ik geweten. Vooral de terugweg vanaf de Apple store in University Village (ik heb me beheerst) was een kleinde hel. Bedankt Bert.
Het is ook de tweede dag dat we bloot gesteld worden aan de All American -Hello How are you today. I'm Zack, I will serve you today. If you need ANYTHING just call for me. - Voor ons Europeanen is dat even wennen. We kenmerken het al snel als overdreven, oppervlakkig.
Aan de andere kant als je dan als toerist op zoek bent naar de juiste afslag en je durft een kaart te raadplegen aan de kant van de weg, dan zal die zelfde Zack je ook weer komen vragen of you need help. Is dat oppervlakkig of beroepsdeformatie? Of is dat toch een diep gewortelde cultuur waarbij het gewoon heel normaal is om de medemens te helpen?

First day in Seattle

2008-03-02T18:12:00.003+01:00

Seattle

Today my first day in Seattle. Yesterday landed at Tacoma 15:00 Seattle time and checked in at the Sheraton. In the evening site seeing in town and had some diner downtown. After 25 hour non-stop enough for the day.

Today it's sunday. I'm wondering what is Seattle doing at sunday. Let's find out today.