Some Reflections On Blogging


As I took  time off in December, 2011 (which probably would not have happened if I did not have an enlightening set of conversations with Dennis Howlett)  – I had an opportunity to reflect on a lot of stuff.  And one of it was on my blogging.

 

I am a sucker for numbers ( Pls don’t hold it against me – I do BI work for a living) and I started by analyzing the stats in wordpress. I started this blog in 2009 December (I think I started an SDN blog a year or two before) , and a whole 104 people read it that month.  In December 2010, I had 3423  hits and in December 2011 I had 2740  hits.  I chose December to compare because it is the slowest month with a lot of people spending a few hours each day away from their computers and mobile devices when they are awake.  I wrote about 50 posts in 2011 – which correlates nicely to the number of weeks I had to fly (I write most posts during the plane rides). The numbers satisfied me ( apparently, I am not very hard to please) on quantitative front, so I thought I should check the quality too. And I did not come away happy this time ( ok so maybe I am a wee little hard to please).

 

As I read through what I wrote over the last year, it became pretty clear that at least 20% of the blogs were lousy. That is time I will never see again, and neither will the folks who read those rants.  Another 20% does not look balanced to me any more. And in the remaining 60%, I felt comfortable that I offered something useful.

 

At this point, all kinds of “consultant like” thoughts started forming in my mind. I narrowed down from a fairly large list to the following causes

 

1. English is not my first language.  Although I had to learn English at school in India, and have been living outside India for a dozen years – I constantly feel it is very difficult for people to understand what I am trying to say.

2. I don’t have enough experience blogging. I started late compared to most people, and probably have not developed a style that works yet.

3. I don’t think through all aspects of an issue before expressing my opinion on my blog.  I do this because I am not very patient, and also because I fear my blog will look like a white paper if I over think it. Forget readers, I will just have to kick myself if I read such a blog.

4.  I don’t have enough breadth of knowledge. My primary topic has been Enterprise Software, with a specific focus on SAP. I have done a little bit of other things too but not as much as I have done SAP. So there is a good chance that I am not making valid points in several cases where I express my opinion.

5. I am making opinions based on experience with large enterprises alone. For some reason, in all my jobs so far – I have had to deal with really big companies.  While that is useful, I do not have a good grasp of the smaller companies directly. What I know about the smaller companies is second hand information I have gathered while doing project reviews, few sales proposals etc. I have not “lived” the life in the SME space.  So when I make generic statements, essentially I am not generalizing enough due to my large enterprise bias.

 

So my plan for 2012 is to do the following

1. Try to avoid blogging on impulse whenever I can. I got some valuable input from Jon Reed on this – so I am not going to totally avoid the impulses, but will give my posts a little more thought than I have so far. ( Err..Excluding this one post I am writing – allow me to slack this one time)

2. Spend some more time reading and commenting on other blogs. I did read a lot last year, but probably did not comment as much and contribute to the conversation

3. Try other media to express my opinions other than the long form blog posts

4. Gain some exposure on parts of Enterprise Software that I am not familiar with . And I will try hard to hide my lack of interest in gamification and social blah blah till it works at some customer I know of.

5.  Gain some exposure to customer segments I have not focused on so far, and continue to “live” with customers.

6. Learn from eminent analysts and bloggers and develop my style as much as I can.

 

I know me better than you know me (I think) ! So I am fairly sure I will not succeed all of these 🙂  So lets see how it works out for me.

 

Happy New Year ! and Happy Blogging !

 

Will SAP be completely Hardware Agnostic in future? I am betting it won’t be.


Josh Greenbaum posted this blog making a case for HW independence for SAP. http://insiderprofiles.wispubs.com/article.aspx?iArticleId=6265 .  Josh needs no introduction, and I am a huge fan of the guy. But on this topic, I respectfully disagree with him.

 

I do agree with Josh in that the Apple analogy is not exactly applicable to keep HW and SW integrated for SAP. Jobs had to do it on the front end and hence that was a good option. SAP’s work is in the data center, and not facing the customer. So the customer experience like Apple is not applicable.

 

Hardware agnostic software was a great option when hardware was pricey, many years ago. Hardware does not command such a huge premium anymore. And consequently, software companies need to re-evaluate their strategy on what they will and will not do in their architecture. Being agnostic worked for last 30 years for SAP, but I seriously doubt if it will be the same even for the next 10.  If pushed hard, I might go on a limb and predict that SAP will do something about HW in 3 years or so.

 

SAP was agnostic to databases and operating systems too – and now that they bought Sybase and have invented HANA – is it reasonable to expect them to be agnostic to Databases going forward?  HANA works only on SUSE Linux, and not AIX or Windows or anything else. And Steve Lucas already pronounced that he will get SAP to number 2 position in database world by revenue by 2015 – which is 3 years away. Will that happen by SAP being DB agnostic? no – SAP will go against Oracle, IBM and MS at every opportunity. It is the smart thing to do.

 

Ok back to hardware – if you look at HANA, it is the hardware advances that made HANA possible today, more than software. I have seen jibes thrown along the lines of “throwing hardware at the issue”  as if HW is a bad solution. HW innovations, as I mentioned before, usually keep SW innovations trying to keep up.  If RAM did not become cheaper, and multicore processing did not happen – would HANA have happened?

 

Currently SAP supports multiple vendors for HANA hardware.  For a 1.0 product , it is probably ok to do this since nothing do-or-die will run on HANA today. But as HANA matures, SAP will need to make HANA work extremely efficiently for OLTP loads, and maybe even “real” big data (the petabytes and upwards size). At this point – will SAP try to optimize HANA for seven different vendors? or will it choose one or two? or will it just introduce its own hardware that is more optimized than every one else’s ? I am betting on the latter. SAP might never completely get rid of partnerships with other HW vendors for other reasons – but if HANA is where SAP is betting the farm, then I see no way SAP is going to remain HW agnostic in mid to long term.

 

Also, SAP now wants to be a cloud player – maybe even a leader as time progresses.  Will they buy a lot of HW from IBM and HP for that? or will they do their own HW?  Since all cloud apps are eventually planned to run on HANA – this is an even stronger case for SAP to stop being HW agnostic.

 

I think Oracle is VERY smart in keeping HW and SW integrated. Just because SAP competes with ORCL is not a good reason to say stacks are bad. Oracle is a very good and successful company too.  Going forward, I do expect to see a lot more similarity between ORCL and SAP in how they create solutions.  To retain leadership, these companies will need to lead with both HW and SW.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rapid Implementation – is the promised land finally here ?


Mike Krigsman posted this today morning on his ZDNET blog http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/predicting-2012-rapid-implementation-in-focus/ . I tried to post a comment, but somehow that does not seem to have posted. So I thought of posting it here.

 

I am not entirely convinced that Rapid Deployments will bring terrific benefits, but will be watching it closely in 2012.  At the moment , I have apprehensions.

 

1.  If faster implementation is such a big agenda item for Enterprise Software vendors, why do this half way approach of Rapid Implementation? Why not go all the way and offer it as SaaS ? Is the idea to milk perpetual licenses for on-premises software for a bit longer, just by repackaging it?

 

2.  Fixed price is a good thing – but hardly unique. Most ERP projects now are following a fixed price contracting structure. I know no one likes change orders – but change orders happen mostly because of scope definition inaccuracies. Projects are progressive in nature – especially ERP projects. So even in Rapid Deployment, at some point – customers will find out they will need something else on top. Will the software vendors provide such changes for free without a change order? If not – will customers feel happy just by paying a software vendor instead of doing it inhouse or paying consultants to do the work?

 

3. Consumerization of IT – making IT “sexy” and “easy” – is a good thing for the business users. However Rapid depolyments only solve a part of this problem, which is the installation part.  While it is a good start – will customers see enough value with just one part of the puzzle solved?

 

4. Rise of CFO’s office is definitely not a 2012 thing. CFOs have always taken active role in IT (and other) investment decisions.  CIOs very rarely report to CEOs, they either report to CFO or to Chief Procurement Officer.

 

5. Who supports Rapid implementation solutions after the vendor walks out of the door? Will there be enough skills in the market for outsourcing companies to provide such support?

 

6. What about integration costs? Stand alone systems always cost more in the long term. Once the rapid implementation goes through enhancements and integration with existing systems – will it offer any benefits beyond other on-premises solutions from the same vendors? And if you enhance a prepackaged solution – will a vendor still provide standard support ?

 

Happy New Year !