Florian Matthes' Blog

Trendence – Absolventenbarometer 2009

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:22:00 GMT

Informatik-Studierende der TUM blicken zuversichtlicher in die Zukunft als diejenigen anderer Universitäten. Und: Sie machen sich trotz Wirtschaftskrise keine Sorgen. Das zeigt die aktuelle Studie „Absolventenbarometer 2009“. Dazu befragte das trendence-Institut deutschlandweit 25.000 Studierende über ihre beruflichen Zukunftspläne und Erwartungen.

TUM-Informatik-Studierende heben sich von ihren Informatik-Kommilitonen an anderen Hochschulen noch in weiteren Punkten ab: So haben sie ihr bisheriges Bachelor- oder Grundstudium durchschnittlich mit einer besseren Note abgeschlossen. Wenn sie an ihre berufliche Tätigkeit nach dem Studium denken, bevorzugen sie vergleichsweise häufiger, Führungsaufgaben zu übernehmen und strategisch zu arbeiten. Außerdem möchten sie schneller durchstarten: Sie streben vermehrter einen direkten Einstieg ins Berufsleben an, anstatt mit einem Trainee-Programm zu beginnen. Sie sind auch bereit, mehr zu arbeiten. TUM-Studierende sind mit durchschnittlich 45,3 Wochenstunden leistungsbereiter als die anderer Hochschulen (43,6 Stunden).

Informatik-Studierende der TUM haben öfter eine berufliche Nebentätigkeit mit Bezug zum Studium, Praktikum sowie Studium im Ausland und engagieren sich mehr außerhalb der Universität. Zudem erwarten sie ein höheres Gehalt als Informatik-Studierende anderer Hochschulen und glauben auch, schneller einen Job zu finden.
Weitere Informationen

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

Social CRM: Ground zero for Enterprise 2.0 in 2010

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:14:32 GMT

There's been some debate recently on whether Social CRM is part of the broader Enterprise 2.0 story. I try to answer the question and explore some of the latest thinking on social business and how it can help transform the customer relationship for real competitive advantage.

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

IT-Stellenmarkt 2009 massiv eingebrochen

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:04:00 GMT

Die Nachfrage nach IT-Experten ist in der Wirtschaftskrise stark zurückgegangen. Insgesamt wurden 35 Prozent weniger IT-Jobs per Stellenanzeige ausgeschrieben. (Studie)

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

Details on Enterprise 2.0 in Operation in Haiti Relief

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:25:03 GMT

I recently posted on Enterprise 2.0 and Web Social Media in Operation in Haiti Relief. The post mentioned that the US military is using an Enterprise 2.0 style collaborative network to help coordinate its relief efforts in Haiti. The TISC (Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation) is a new iteration of APAN (the All Partners Access Network) which was developed by the Defense Department a few years ago. I recently spoke with Walton Smith who was involved in the development of APAN to get the details. First, I will cover how it works and then cover how it came into being and then its use in Haiti. We have been reading about the logistics troubles in Haiti but they might be even worse without the TISC. Haiti is the first activity of scale to use the system.

When you are determining ROI based on number of hospital beds filled and people who receive much needed food, the benefits take on a different meaning. The TISC concept is to help the US military better coordinate with NGOs and other countries when disaster strikes. The objective is to a create system that not only helps with particular disasters but also builds an archive of best practices, key people/organizations and useful information to better handle future needs, as well as a platform for efficient cooperation.

There are main components of the system: forums, wikis, chat and blogs. In the forums, people are able to ask questions (how to find experts, etc.) and make requests (can you help with this issue, etc.), as well as offer help or point out resources that others can draw on (e.g., available hospital beds or safe landing areas). The forum tags content and sets up a treaded dialog on the specific issues. The chat tool allows for real time secure communications. Then the content is organized and placed in a wiki for ease of retrieval. Finally, the best practices are abstracted and put into blogs to attract comments and be available for use in future disaster relief efforts. In the future, there will be expert locators and profiles.

This version of APAN began two years ago when the US Pacific Command (PACOM) wanted to develop an online community for the free flow of information between validated people from the US military, NGOs and other countries. Ty Wooldrige and Jerry Giles led the effort for PACOM. Booz Allen was asked to create the system with PACOM, and James Kaina and Tim Gramp are the Booz Allen leads.

The system was first tested on some small efforts. The support for mobile devices was strengthened. The US Southern Command asked the PACOM to provide an operational demonstration of the system. The PACOM team was in Miami for this demo when the Haiti earthquake struck. The Southern Command said to forget simply doing a demo and decided to put the system into real use to help with Haiti. Now APAN is providing real-time help, validating the concept and vision, gathering useful content, and the Haiti effort is providing a significant test of the system to make further improvements.

The US military was one of the early leaders in knowledge management and the use of after action reviews and lessons learned. It is nice to see it acting as one of the leaders in the use of Enterprise 2.0 concepts that take the vision of knowledge management significantly forward with new tools, transparency, and capabilities.

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

The HR Problem #1 – The Traditional Organization is a Machine and We are Human

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:27:43 GMT

Picture from Delta7.com

Did you laugh when you saw this? I did. I laughed because the picture tells the truth that we dare not speak about. That the only thing that keeps the formal organization going are the informal, unseen, human, social networks that both inhabit it and cross its boundaries.

What really lives and works today are social networks. But all the rules that are used in the traditional organization are based on the central metaphor that it is a machine and that people are merely components.

This is the disconnect that Jon and I wish to talk about in this new series on HR and IT.

There are many reasons why the old model is not a good one any more. The disconnect between the machine model and our humanity makes us ill.

This slide is taken for Marmot’s historic study of the UK Civil Service. (The Whitehall Study) What it shows is that our hierarchies kill us. The issue is control. Those in the lowest levels are 5 times more likely to die of Heart Disease than those on the far left, the Senior Leadership. High demands and low control cause our immune system to be compromised. The traditional organization is all about control. CHD is not the only outcome. At my old employer, a major bank, more than 60% of the women staff used anti depressants. We were typical.

We are miserable inside these kinds of organizations – if a better alternative arrives we will go there. Many of my kids age group, about 30, will not work in such places. They just can’t cope with the control.

These organizations cannot cope with change. And Change is all there is right now. We also know how unresponsive these organizations are to change. I was stunned to know this week that most governments in North America still use Word Perfect! This of course is tiny when compared to facing the challenges that confront us all.

There are new organizations based on natural models that are now at scale and making a difference in the world. They are now ready as a model, to be applied everywhere. You think I exaggerate? Let’s look at these numbers.

Skype has 500 million customers/users and only 600 staff. How many people work for your Telco?

Mozilla has about 350 million and so does Wikipedia. Mozilla has 375 staff and Wikipedia 30.

Back in 2007, Craigslist had the 7th highest number of page views of any web company. It had 23 on the payroll. Yahoo, the # 1 had 10,000. Time Warner #2 had 90,000. No wonder the newspapers lost the personals and the locals and could never get them back.

Here is one I bet you never thought of. It is the grandfather of the natural model – the first Chaord or as Jon might the first Wirearchic Organization.

Back in the 1990’s Visa International had 355 million users, 23,000 partners and operated in more than 200 countries but had only 3,000 employees. The NatWest at that time had 81,000 and B of A 91,000 and a fraction of the scale. Here is more current information

All these organizations are designed as natural networks. They use Group Forming as their value proposition.

In the next few weeks, we will talk about what is it about these natural network models that make them so effective? What are the new rules? Why does social media make so much sense in the network model? Why is it so hard to install any of this in the traditional model?

How can a traditional organization stand up to this? After all an artisan weaver could not stand up to the big mill. So once again, a better model will trump the lesser. The industrialization of the world took less than 50 years to be dominant. How long will it take for the natural model to supplant the mechanical?

Is this something that you should know about?

There will be a lot of pain along the way. Especially for those that get caught by the transition. But there is good news. I think that we are about to return to a world where mankind is no longer separated by his tools and processes from nature but is in fact ironically taken home by his new tool set. The plow took us to a cold inhuman and unnatural machine world – the internet and the metaphor that it embodies will return us home. Home to a world where we live again inside the metaphor and rules of nature herself.

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

iPad - Apples Tablet ist da

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:54:00 GMT

Apple hat mit dem iPad ein Tablet vorgestellt, das als digitales Buch und als Rechner für Spiele, E-Mails, Webbrowsing und als Mediaplayer verwendet werden kann. Das Gerät ist mit einem 9,7 Zoll großen Display und einem von Apple entwickelten Prozessor namens A4 ausgestattet. Es soll die Lücke zwischen Notebook und iPhone schließen. (Kindle, Apple)

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

Simple Groupware 0.600 verfügbar

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:52:00 GMT

Mit der Version 0.600 erhält die Open-Source-Software Simple Groupware einen SOAP-Server, über den Daten auch aus der Ferne verwaltet werden können. Benutzer können per E-Mail über neue Einträge informiert werden. Eine neue Oberfläche synchronisiert Daten mit mobilen Geräten. (CMS, RSS)

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

TU München gewinnt im Spitzenclusterwettbewerb

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 01:40:49 GMT

Eine international besetzte Jury gab heute bekannt, dass das Münchener Spitzencluster m4 ("m hoch vier") für personalisierte Medizin und zielgerichtete Therapien zu einem der fünf Gewinner des Spitzenclusterwettbewerbs zählt. Der deutschlandweite Wettbewerb des Bundesforschungsministeriums (BMBF) fördert Regionen, in denen auf herausragende Weise Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft zusammenarbeiten. Die 100 Partner von m4 erhalten aus Mitteln des Bundes, des Landes Bayern und der beteiligten Unternehmen knapp 100 Millionen Euro. Die TU München ist an rund der Hälfte der mehr als 40 Struktur- und Forschungsprojekte beteiligt.

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

Strategic Decision Making Trumps The Alternative

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 02:03:00 GMT

A strategist frequently has to temper the desire for structured planning and strategic decision making with the reality of organizational life, which includes:

· Organizational politics (who has the power today to get their way).

· Subjective management whims (I think, I believe, I feel, but mainly I want—regardless of objective facts).

· Situational knee-jerk reactions (due to something that broke, a mandate that came down, an audit that was failed, and so on)

· People with some cash to throw around (they have $ and “its burning a hole in their pockets;” can anyone say “spend-down”?).

The result though of abandoning strategic decision-making is that IT investment decisions will be sub-optimal and maybe even big losers—some examples includes:

· Investment “shelfware” (the seals on the packages of the software or hardware may never even get broken)

· Redundant technologies (that drain limited resources to operate and maintain them)

· Systems that are obsolete by the time they make it into production (because they were a bad idea to begin with)

· Failed IT projects galore (because they never had true organizational commitment and for the right reasons)

Why does strategic decision-making help avoid bad organizational investments?

1) Having a vision, a plan, and an enterprise architecture trumps ping-pong balling around in the firefight of the day, because the first is goal-oriented—linear and directed, and the second is issue-oriented—dictated by the problem du-jour, and generally leads to nowhere in particular.

2) Having a structured governance process with analysis of alternatives and well-thought out and transparent criteria, weightings, and rankings trumps throwing an investment dart into the dark and hoping that it hits a project with a real payoff.

3) Taking a strategic view driven by positive long-term outcomes for the organization trumps an operational view driven by short-term results for the individual.

4) Taking an enterprise solutions view that seeks sharing and economies of scale trumps an instance-by-instance approach, which results in gaps, redundancies, inefficiencies, and systems that can’t talk with each other.

5) Taking an organization view where information sharing and horizontal collaboration result in people working together for the greater organizational good, trumps functional views (vertical silos) where information is hoarded and the “us versus them attitude,” results in continuous power struggles over scare resources and decisions that benefits individuals or groups at the expense of the organization as a whole.

Certainly, we cannot expect that all decisions will be made under optimal conditions and follow “all the rules.” However, as leaders we must create the organizational structures, policies, processes, and clear roles and responsibilities to foster strategic decision-making versus a continued firefighting approach.

Understanding that organizations and people are imperfect and that we need to balance many competing interests from many stakeholders does not obviate the need to create the conditions for sounder decision-making and better organizational results. Perhaps, this can help us distinguish the genuine IT leaders committed to organizational excellence and those that are self-serving.

While we will never completely get rid of the politics and other sideline influences on how we make our investments, we can mitigate them through a process-driven organization approach that is based on a healthy dose of planning and governance. The pressure to give in to the daily crisis and catfight can be great that is why we need organizational structures to hold the line.

Posted via email from Andy Blumenthal - IT & Business Thought Leader

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

OOPSLA 2010 Call for Papers, Expanded Scope!

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:51:58 GMT

OOPSLA 2010 Research Papers

October 17 to 20
Reno/Tahoe Nevada, USA

www.splashcon.org

Paper Submission Deadline: March 25, 2010
Accept/Reject Notification Date: May 24, 2010

OOPSLA 2010 solicits research papers that present new research, report novel technical results, advance the state of the art, or discuss experience or experimentation. The scope of OOPSLA includes all aspects of programming languages and software engineering, broadly construed.

Papers may address any aspect of software development, including requirements, modeling, prototyping, design, implementation, generation, analysis, verification, testing, evaluation, project cancellation, maintenance, reuse, regeneration, replacement, and retirement of software systems. Papers on tools (such as new programming languages, program analyses (dynamic or static), compilers, and garbage collectors) or techniques (such as new programming methodologies, type systems, design processes, code organization approaches, and management techniques) designed to reduce the time, effort, and/or cost of software systems are particularly welcome.

Submitted papers should conform to the ACM Proceedings Format. There is no page limit on submitted papers. It is, however, the responsibility of the authors to keep the reviewers interested and motivated to read the paper. Reviewers are under no obligation to read all or even a substantial portion of a paper if they do not find the initial part of the paper interesting. The committee will not accept a paper if it is not clear to the committee that the paper will fit in the OOPSLA 2010 proceedings, which will limit accepted papers to 20 pages. We anticipate that the vast majority of accepted OOPSLA submissions will fit in 12 pages or less.

OOPSLA particularly encourages the submission of papers that diverge from the dominant trajectory of the field or challenge the existing value system. Such papers are often controversial. To enhance the ability of the program committee to accept such papers, each member of the committee will have the unilateral right to accept one paper into the conference regardless of the opinions of the other committee members. This policy is designed to favor papers that elicit strong opinions (both positive and negative) over relatively predictable papers that simply reinforce the existing status quo.

The program committee may consider the following criteria when evaluating submitted papers:

Novelty: The paper presents new results and places its results appropriately within the context established by previous research in the field.
Excitement: The results in the paper are interesting, intriguing, or provocative. The paper challenges or changes informed opinion about what is possible, true, or likely.
Evidence: The paper presents evidence supporting its claims. Examples of evidence include formalizations and proofs, implemented systems, experimental results, statistical analyses, case studies, and anecdotes.
Clarity: The paper presents its claims and results clearly.

OOPSLA 2010 will continue a long-standing tradition of recognizing a student-authored paper of the conference. The program chair will select the winning paper among those recommended by the program committee. Eligible papers will describe the work of one or more students, one of whom must be the primary author. Authors will indicate eligibility as part of the submission process.

OOPSLA 2010 will also present an award for the most influential paper published 10 years ago at OOPSLA 2000.

OOPSLA Research papers will be presented as part of the new Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH) Conference, which grew out of the Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications (OOPSLA).

Program Chair

Martin Rinard (MIT) rinard@lcs.mit.edu

Program Committee

Ali-Reza Adl-Tabatabai (Intel)
Elisa Baniassad (Australian National University)
Emery Berger (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Hans-J. Boehm (HP Labs)
Michael Bond (University of Texas, Austin)
Cristian Cadar (Imperial College)
Robert Cartwright (Rice University)
Wei-Ngan Chin (National University of Singapore)
Jong-Deok Choi (Samsung)
Brian Demsky (University of California, Irvine)
Kathleen Fisher (AT&T Labs Research)
Richard P. Gabriel (IBM Research)
Robert Hirschfeld (Hasso-Plattner-Institut Potsdam)
Antony Hosking (Purdue University)
Maria Jump (King’s College)
Christoph Kirsch (University of Salzburg)
Patrick Lam (Waterloo)
Gary T. Leavens (University of Central Florida)
Ondrej Lhotak (Waterloo)
Benjamin Pierce (University of Pennsylvania)
Bill Pugh (University of Maryland)
Shaz Qadeer (Microsoft)
Jakob Rehof (University of Dortmund)
Dirk Riehle (Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nürnberg)
Dave Thomas (Bedarra Research Labs)
Vijay Saraswat (IBM Research)
Koushik Sen (University of California, Berkeley)
Eli Tilevich (Virginia Tech)
Frank Tip (IBM Research)
Westley Weimer (University of Virginia)
Eran Yahav (IBM Research)
Kwangkeun Yi (Seoul National University)
Andreas Zeller (Saarland University)
Lenore Zuck (National Science Foundation)

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

Virtual Enterprise 2.0 Conference Schedule

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 01:17:34 GMT

We’ve been fielding a lot of questions about the schedule for Virtual Enterprise 2.0 Conference and, at long last, we are now ready to unveil the program schedule - minus full details on the Microsoft keynote.

Between sessions, check out the Expo Floor and network with other attendees in the lounge - just like at a physical event. Be sure to stop by the Enterprise 2.0 Conference booth and say hi too.

… and remember this is all free.

10:30 am (All times are Eastern Standard Time)

Doors Open - Network with other attendees in the lounge, take a first trip through the Expo Floor and get a feel for the user interface.

11:00 am

Opening Keynote - Head over to the Keynote Hall to hear from Morten T. Hansen, Professor, University of California Berkeley, School of Information and Author of Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results

12:00 pm

Accelerating Business Performance with Enterprise 2.0 - Oliver Marks & Sameer Patel of the Sovos Group discuss the stages from inception to completion that form the gateways to successful justification, budget allocation and roll out. The session will provide guidance on how to plan, internally sell, design, develop and launch Enterprise 2.0 initiatives that will provide tangible business value to your organization.

1:00 pm

Building an Interactive Enterprise - Join Louis Richardson, Worldwide Sales Executive, Social Software from IBM, as he reviews what IBM is doing to challenge people to think differently and do business differently. Learn how to create an interactive office environment with enterprise 2.0 capabilities that can bring people and content together quickly, integrate them into existing business processes, support high performance teaming, and drive faster decision making across the value chain of your organization.

1:30 pm

IBM Meet the Expert Q&A - Head over to the IBM booth for an in-depth Q&A session with Martha Mealy from IBM Lotus Market Management.

2:00 pm

Microsoft Keynote - TBA

2:30 pm

Microsoft Q&A Session - Who doesn’t have questions for Microsoft? This is your chance to ask them directly.

3:00 pm

Social Software Tools: A Critical Evaluation - To date, technology analysts have quite properly focused on the social and business aspects of social software. And yet, social software tools (including collaboration suites, pure-play blog / wiki / social-networking products, and revamped portal products from major vendors) differ quite substantially in maturity, approach, and support. This session will share customer research from noted evaluation firm CMS Watch on leading social software technologies, and provide a framework for customers to evaluate the marketplace based on their own needs. Presented by Tony Byrne, Founder, CMS Watch.

4:00 pm

Hello Again: The Evolution of Hello.bah.com - The 2009 Open Enterprise Award winner, Booz Allen Hamilton, is an organization well versed in leveraging Enterprise 2.0. In this session, learn how Booz Allen’s Hello.bah.com platform is evolving. From the tools leveraged to their approach to policy, governance, and user support, Hello, like many Enterprise 2.0 implementations, is changing as it is integrated into the fabric of the organization. Presented by Walton Smith, Senior Associate & Megan Murray, Community Manager/Project Coordinator, Booz Allen Hamilton

6:00 pm

Event Closes

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

Gordon - Flash ohne Plug-in

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:59:00 GMT

Der Münchner Webentwickler Tobias Schneider hat mit Gordon eine in Javascript realisierte Flash-Runtime veröffentlicht. Sie nutzt die Fähigkeiten modernder Browser, um Flash-Inhalte ohne Plug-in direkt im Browser anzuzeigen. (JavaScript, Flash)

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

Internet Explorer macht Attacken auf Google & Co. möglich

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:25:00 GMT

Im Internet Explorer befindet sich ein offenes Sicherheitsloch, das seit Mitte Dezember 2009 aktiv ausgenutzt wird. Unter anderem liefen darüber die Angriffe auf Google, mit denen der Suchmaschinenbetreiber seinen Abzug aus China begründet. Auch andere namhafte IT-Unternehmen waren jüngst entsprechenden Angriffen ausgesetzt. (Browser, Microsoft)

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

Es ist eine Matrix! Social Software verstehen und vergleichen mit der Socialsoftwarematrix

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 08:53:00 GMT

Seit Mitte November ist sie als Beta Version live, wir haben schon immer mal darüber gesprochen und darauf verlinkt, aber jetzt wird es höchste Zeit, unserer neuesten Errungenschaft (unserem Baby:-) hier deutlich mehr als nur einen Link zu widmen. Also: Bühne frei für die socialsoftwarematrix.org.

Im folgenden die acht wichtigsten Punkte, die man zur Matrix wissen sollte:

1. Wofür braucht man die Matrix?

Der Markt für Social Software explodiert förmlich. Neue Anbieter kommen aus den Nischen von Foren-, Wiki- oder Blogsoftware und rüsten Ihre Produkte zu vollwertigen Social Software Suiten auf. Auf der anderen Seite gibt es die etablierten Platzhirsche im Bereich Collaboration und CMS Anbieter, die Ihren Tools Web 2.0 Funktionen hinzufügen. Ein sehr dynamischer Markt, der in Zukunft einige Stars aber auch viele Sternschnuppen sehen wird. Die Matrix soll helfen, in diesem Dschungel den Überblick zu behalten und angepasst an die eigenen Bedürfnisse und Absichten eine Shortlist der spannendsten Anwendungen erstellen zu können. Diese engere Wahl sollte dann im Idealfall als Pilot installiert und ausführlich getestet werden. Erst dann kann man eine wirklich belastbare Entscheidung über das am besten passende System treffen.

2. Es gibt doch schon Vergleiche von Wiki Systemen oder?

Viele kennen die Wikimatrix, die aktuell mehr als 120 Systeme beinhaltet. Das ist gut für einen ersten Eindruck, aber die Tatsache, dass zwei Anwendungen eine Wiki Funktionalität anbieten, sagt sehr wenig darüber aus, wie das Wiki implementiert ist, wie es mit anderen Funktionalitäten zusammenspielt oder wie einfach es zu benutzen ist. Darüber hinaus wollen wir uns vor allem auf komplette Suiten fokussieren, die nicht nur ein Wiki beinhalten, sondern auch Blogs, Foren, abgrenzbare Bereiche, Dashboards u.s.w.enthalten und auch technisch und administrativ für den Einsatz im Unternehmen geeignet sind.

Die größte Herausforderung für einen belastbaren Vergleich ist aber eine andere Besonderheit von Social Software. Sie ist außerordentlich flexibel und offen für verschiedenste Arten der Anwendung. Der Wert besteht darin, einen einfachen und flexiblen Rahmen zu schaffen, in dem persönliche und gemeinsame Orte der Konversation und Zusammenarbeit entstehen können. Diese große Flexibilität hat aber einen Haken. Es gibt sehr viele Antworten auf die Frage: „Was genau macht man eigentlich damit?” Man kann mit einer Social Business Suite sehr viele verschiedene Anwendungsszenarien unterstützen. Es gibt deshalb nicht das eine beste System, sondern verschiedene Antworten, je nachdem ob man mehr Projektarbeit im überschaubaren Team oder unternehmensweite Vernetzung im Sinn hat. Aus unserer Sicht sollte deshalb die Basis eines Vergleiches nicht aus technischen Features bestehen, sondern beim Anwendungsfall ansetzen.

3. Nach welchen Anwendungsfällen wird in der Matrix unterschieden?

Wir betrachten fünf verschiedene geschäftliche Anwendungsfälle, außerdem drei technische Szenarien und zwei Aspekte zur Bewertung des Anbieters:

Geschäftliche Anwendungsfälle:

Enterprise Communication: Hier wird bewertet wie ein Social Software Tool die Verbesserung der Kommunikation zwischen Mitarbeitern, Partnern und Kunden ermöglicht und ob es sich als zentrale Kommunikationsplattform einsetzen lässt. Hauptanforderungen: Blog- und Foren Funktionalität

Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange: Hier wird analysiert in welchem Ausmaß Zusammenarbeit und Wissensaustausch zwischen Nutzern auf der Social Software Plattform möglich ist. Hauptanforderungen: Offene und geschlossene Arbeitsräume, Wiki, Dateiaustausch

Social Networking & Expert Search: Hier wird getestet wie gut ein Social Software Produkt Mitarbeiter bei Aufbau und Ausbau ihres Netzwerkes unterstützt und wie leicht es ist, Experten zu finden. Hauptanforderung: Nutzerprofile, Follower/Connect-Funktion, Skill/Personensuche

Personal Information Management: Wie einfach ist es für den Nutzer, sich zu organisieren und alle persönlich relevanten Informationen zentral zu aggregieren. Hauptanforderung: Personal Dashboard, Activity-Streams, RSS-Support, Suche

Project Management: Dieser Fall baut auf den Anforderungen von Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange auf und bewertet darüber hinaus wie gut zusätzliche Funktionalitäten das Management und die Durchführung von Projekten unterstützen. Hauptanforderung: Kalendar und Zeitmanagement, Aufgabenverteilung

Technische Szenarien:

Operational Flexibility: In dieser Kategorie wird bewertet wie einfach es ist, die analysierte Social Software Plattform aufzusetzen und unter verschiedenen Bedingungen in die IT-Landschaft von Unternehmen zu integrieren.

Customization & Extensibility: Diese Kategorie dreht sich um die Möglichkeiten die Social Software auf User- und Plattform Ebene anzupassen und den gegebenen Funktionsumfang selbst oder mit Drittanbieter Software zu erweitern.

Data & Security: In Data & Security wird das Datenhandling und Zugriffsmanagement der Social Software Systeme bewertet.

Betrachtung des Anbieters:

Vendor Position: Die Vendor Position ergibt sich unter anderem aus der Größe-, Marktposition-, und der Produktstrategie- des Social Software Herstellers. Aus der Gesamtbetrachtung dieser Variablen kann man auf das Zukunftspotenzial des Social Software Produktes schließen.

Support & Services: In der Kategorie Support & Services wird neben den direkten Herstellerleistungen besonders die Größe und Qualität des Partnernetzwerkers in Betracht gezogen. Die Kombination entscheidet in wie weit die für Firmen nötigen Service-Level erreicht werden.

4. Welche Tools werden bewertet?

Der Enterprise Social Software Markt bietet eine große Bandbreite an Tools mit einer klaren Tendenz in Richtung integrierter Social Software Suites, denen viele die größten Chancen im Wettbewerb einräumen. Diesem Trend folgend wurden bei der Toolauswahl nur Produkte berücksichtigt die wenigstens vier der angesprochenen Anwendungsfälle abdecken. Aus einer Vorauswahl von zwanzig Tools wurden dann für den Launch der Social Software Matrix die neun vielversprechendsten ausgewählt. Die Tools:

Atlassian Confluence 3.0
blueKiwi 2009
Google Apps Pro + Wave
IBM Lotus Connections 2.5
Jive SBS 4.0
Liferay Social Office
Microsoft SharePoint 2010
Socialtext
MindTouch

5. Wie funktioniert die Bewertung?

Die Bewertungen der Tools wurden anhand eines Benchmarking-Verfahrens abgeleitet, indem das Leistungsangebot der verschiedenen Tools für jede Kategorie mit dem jeweiligen Category-Champion verglichen wurde. Die Category-Champions konnten durch einen Vergleich der Kategorieanforderungen mit den ausgewählten Tools bestimmt werden. Um die Ergebnisse aus dem theoretischen Leistungsvergleich in den Use-Case Kategorien praktisch zu überprüfen, wurde standardisierter Beispielcontent für die Use-Cases erstellt und in alle Tools eingepflegt. Auftretende Unterschiede zwischen theoretischem Vergleich und praktischer Erfahrung, wurden in die Bewertung mit eingerechnet. Informationen zu einem System bekommt man auf drei Ebenen. Man kann es entweder bei einem Überblick über die Systeme und Szenarien belassen, oder eine Ebene tiefer auf ein einzelnes System springen und dann sogar für jeden Anwendungsfall ein Reihe von Screenshots sehen, die ein gutes Gefühl für jede Applikation und Ihre Stärken und Schwächen vermitteln.

Ebene 1: Überblick mit dem Vergleichswidget (siehe oben)

Ebene 2: Details zum System und Beschreibung der einzelnen Anwendugsfälle

Ebene 3: Screenshots zu jedem Anwendungsfall

6. Was ist noch wichtig?

Einige Systeme sind nach der Installation praktisch funktionsbereit, andere verstehen sich eher als Framework, die sehr flexibel sind, aber für den Anfang einiges an Konfigurations- und teilweise auch Entwicklungsarbeit benötigen, um gut nutzbar zu sein. Wir haben hier versucht, einen guten Mittelweg zu finden, aber es ist klar, dass man alle Tools in der Matrix mit mehr oder weniger großem Entwicklungsaufwand in allen Anwendungsfällen auf 100% bringen könnte.

Ein weiterer Punkt, der schon zu Diskussionen geführt hat, ist die Tatsache, dass wir mit Sharepoint 2010 ein System im Betastadium mit aufgenommen haben. Uns geht es vor allem darum, eine Entscheidung zur Softwareauswahl zu unterstützen, die mittelfristige einige Auswirkungen hat und für die nächsten Jahre in der Unternehmens IT eine Richtung vorgibt. Aus diesem Grund wollen wir das aktuell bestmögliche Wissen in der Matrix zusammentragen, auch wenn das den Vergleich aktuell verfügbarer Systeme evtl. etwas verändert.

7. Kommen weitere Tools dazu?

Das ist auf jeden Fall unser Ziel. Die Übersicht soll fortlaufend aktualisiert werden. Auch haben wir viele Anfragen von Anbietern, Limit ist vor allem die Zeit. Wir denken über eine Vorschlags- und Bewertungsfunktion nach, um die Leser über die spannendsten Systeme abstimmen zu lassen.

8. Die Helden der Matrix

Wer länger in der Matrix unterwegs ist, bekommt eine Ahnung wie viel Arbeit darin steckt. Dahinter stehen viele engagierte und pfiffige Köpfe, die mit viel Enthusiasmus und Einsatz diesen Stand möglich gemacht haben: Bernd Appelhans, Christoph Rauhut, Sandra Barthel, Ulf Kossol, Uwe Schuster, Yvonne Koletzki, Katharina Simon und Joachim Heinz. Danke!

Ausblick

Wir sind dabei die Matrix ins Gespräch zu bringen und sowohl technisch als auch inhaltlich weiter zu entwickeln. Wir freuen uns sehr über Feedback und Diskussionen, denn letzendlich entscheiden die Anwender, welche Tools sich im harten Praxiseinsatz auf Dauer am besten bewähren. Die Antwort ist irgendwo da draußen

Neo: What is the Matrix?

Trinity: The answer is out there, Neo, and it’s looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to.

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

Google Docs wird zum universellen Onlinespeicher

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:10:00 GMT

Google erweitert seine Online-Office-Suite Google Docs um einen Onlinespeicher. Nutzer können darüber künftig beliebige Dateien mit anderen austauschen. (API, Google)

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

Fixing IT in the cloud computing era

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:41:28 GMT

The reality of cloud computing as it exists today already offers significant potential to IT departments that want to cut costs, lighten their infrastructure footprint, and adopt agile new technologies. Whether it's private clouds or public ones, all signs point towards it being one of the top new approaches for enterprise IT for 2010. This is coming right at a time when traditional enterprise models for IT have come under increasingly sharp criticism for failure to perform, including most recently SOA and just about any "big system" enterprise project these days. Most would agree that something needs to change, and the cloud might be the first compelling escape route from a long-standing conundrum: How can we connect information technology directly to the business in a much more effective and less failure-prone way than we do now? I explore the latest debate surround enterprise IT and how cloud computing will augment or even entirely replace IT eventually.

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

IT Needs To Be More Advisory

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:32:36 GMT

All content written by and copyrighted by Todd Biske. If you are reading this on a site other than my “Outside the Box” blog, it’s probably being republished without my permission. Please consider reading it at the source.

Sometimes a simple message can be the most powerful. In a recent discussion on a SOA Consortium phone call, I made the comment that IT needs to shift its mentality from provider to advisor. I hope that most people read this and view it as completely obvious, but recognizing the fact and actually executing against it are two different stories.

Let’s look at two trends that I think are pretty hard to argue against in most corporate IT organizations. The first trend is to build less stuff. Building less means that we’re either reusing stuff we already have, or acquiring stuff from some other source and configuring (not customizing) it to meet our needs. This could be free stuff, COTS, SaaS, etc. The point is, there is no software development required.

The second trend can be summed up as buy fewer (none) servers. Virtualization, data center consolidation/elimination, and cloud computing all have ties back to this trend, but the end result is that no one wants to build new data centers unless data centers are your business.

So, if you accept these trends as real, this means that IT isn’t providing applications and IT isn’t providing infrastructure. Then what is IT providing? I would argue that rather than looking for something new to “provide,” IT needs to change its fundamental thinking from provider to advisor or be at risk of becoming irrelevant.

Am I simply stating the obvious? Well, to some extent, I hope so. What should also be obvious, however, is that this change in role at an organizational level won’t happen by accident. While an individual may be able to do this, redefining an entire organization around the concept is a different story. A provider typically needs to only understand their side of the equation, that is, what they’re providing. If you’re a software developer, you understand software development, and you sit back and wait for someone to give you a software development task. Often times, the provider may establish some set offerings, and it’s up to the consumer to decide if those offerings meet their needs or not. An advisor, on the other hand, must understand both sides of the problem: the needs of the consumer and the offerings of the provider.

To illustrate this, take an example from the world of financial services. A broker may simply be someone you call up and say, “Buy 100 shares of APPL at no more than $200.” They are a provider of stock transaction services. A financial advisor on the other hand, should be asking about what your needs are, and matching those against the various financial offerings they have at their disposal. If they don’t understand client needs or if they don’t understand the financial offerings, you’re at risk of getting something sub-optimal.

IT needs to shift from being the technology provider to the technology advisor. Will people outside of IT continue to hand-pick technology solutions without the right breadth of knowledge? Sure, just as people today go out and buy some stock without proper thought of whether that’s really the right investment for them or just what everyone else is doing. The value add that IT needs to offer is the same that financial consultants do. We provide significantly better depth of understanding of the technology domains, along with the right amount of understanding of the business domains of our companies to advise the organization on technology decisions. For the non-IT worker that loves technology, it should be seen as validation of their efforts (not a roadblock).

The final message on all of this, however, is that I believe architecture plays a critical role. To actually build an advisory organization, you must categorize both the technology and the business into manageable domains where people can build expertise. Where does this categorization come from? Architecture. Taking a project-first approach is backwards. Projects should not define the categories and the architecture, the categories and desired architecture should define the projects.

So, you can see that this simple concept really does represent a fundamental shift in the way of thinking that needs to occur, and it’s one that’s not going to happen overnight. If you’re a CIO, it’s time to get this message out and start defining the steps you need to take to move your organization from a provider to an advisor.

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

Enterprise Architecture Today and Tomorrow

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:00:00 GMT

Enterprise architecture is a recognized best practice for growing IT’s efficiency and effectiveness in supporting business. Despite this, the practice of EA itself has not always been efficient and effective. In many organizations, this has led to the EA function being formed, then dissolved, and then reconstituted as CIOs try to find the best way for the organization to get value from it. EA as a support function is not unique in this frequent flux—similar situations are found with enterprise PMOs, IT strategy, and process improvement efforts.

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

Four Months of Open Source Professorship

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:10:20 GMT

2009 is coming to an end and so are my first four months as a professor. Time to take stock, if only shortly.

The Open Source Research group posted a year-end summary for its first months
There is initial sponsorship by Red Hat and Novell, demonstrating industry interest
There was a fair amount of press around the professorship, showing general public interest

All in all, a good end to a year that most of us would prefer to forget. But as Matt Asay is suggesting, this may have been the year that Open Source made it big, so this is something to celebrate!

Stay tuned for upcoming research work on open source, using this blog’s RSS feed, or the OSR group’s home page and RSS feed, and of course the @dirkriehle and @osrgroup Twitter streams!

And of course a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2010 to everyone!

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.

Bluetooth-Tastaturen am iPhone nutzen

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:58:00 GMT

Das iPhone besitzt wie die neuen Modelle des iPod touch einen Bluetooth-Chip, doch viel Peripherie kann das Mobiltelefon darüber nicht ansteuern. Mit der Anwendung BTstack Keyboard können nun auch Bluetooth-Tastaturen genutzt werden. (Bluetooth, iPhone)

This post was imported from www.google.com. Click here for the original post.