Third-party applications are a very important part of the IT landscape. Many of us have faced the common dilemma of trying to decide whether to build or buy that next important application our organizations need. (By the way, I’m talking about smaller, specialized applications like an inventory management system for the company warehouse, or a practice management system for a doctor’s office. I’m not talking about the huge and incredibly sophisticated ERP systems like SAP and Oracle Financials.) [READ MORE]
Archive for the ‘Trends’ Category
DBTA: The Trouble with Third-Party Applications
Tuesday, September 28th, 2010DBTA: SQL Server in the Clouds?
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010The idea of “SQL Server in the cloud” is all the rage as I write this article. Many SQL Server experts already predict the demise of the IT data center and a complete upending of the current state of our industry, in which large enterprises can spend millions of dollars on SQL Server licenses, hardware and staff. I have to admit, when I first heard about this idea, I was ecstatic. What could be better for an enterprise than to have all the goodness of a SQL Server database with none of the hardware or staffing issues? However, on deeper examination, there is much about which to be cautious. [READ MORE]
The State of the Internet Operating System
Friday, September 17th, 2010
DBTA:Reaching for Highly Scalable Systems with SQL Server 2008
Monday, August 30th, 2010SQL Server has supported VLDBs (very large databases) for some time now. Back in the SQL Server 2000 days, I recall hearing multi-terabyte databases were unusual but doable. Now, they are commonplace, while databases in the hundreds of terabytes inhabit the part of the map that says “there be dragons.” While VLDBs are quite common on SQL Server today, highly scalable systems that can be flexibly extended in the same fashion as Oracle/RAC are less so. So, how do you design a highly available architecture for SQL Server if it’s not like Oracle/RAC. [READ MORE]
DBTA: Long-Term Changes Resulting from Policy-Based Management
Monday, August 23rd, 2010It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that my company’s IT department was bracing for a major new line of work. Back in the mid 1990s, we were going full steam into client-server technology. At the same time, we were significantly expanding our workforce. The IT department that had spent years as an old-style mainframe shop, was suddenly inundated with requests for new workstations, network user IDs, new network domains, permission requests, and requests for application access privileges. Our lone mainframe permissions person quickly felt overwhelmed and a little baffled by all of these new privileges and provisioning needs. Within a year or two of our first client-server application, we went from one to three staffers working full-time granting access to the various applications and network resources within our environment. [READ MORE]
DBTA: The New Master’s Certification from Microsoft
Monday, August 16th, 2010In July, Microsoft announced its new advanced training and certification program known as the Master’s Certification. (Read more about it at http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/master/default.mspx). I’m really excited about this new certification because it fully lives up to the standard of “the appropriate certification for the appropriate audience.” For one thing, if you’ve ever gone to a martial arts school, you may find many talented martial artists and even several black belts there, but you’ll rarely find more than one “master.” Expect this new SQL Server certification to be equally rare and, hence, very meaningful regarding the certificate holders’ capabilities. [READ MORE]
Toad for Cloud Databases Community is now live!
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
Toad's Gone All Sci-Fi on us. Engage, Number 1!
Quest Software is proud to announce the launch of the Toad for Cloud Databases community site. You can also get the free Toad for Cloud product here. It’s in beta, but definitely worth a try.
If you’ve wondered what’s over the horizon, I encourage you to take a look at this interview with Billy Bosworth, the head of Quest’s database tools group. (Yes, he’s the guy who signs my checks). We are now experiencing more disruptive technologies in the world of data than we have seen in nearly two decades. Perhaps your database is better suited for the cloud or maybe you want to investigate using a data store as part of your application architecture that isn’t even relational. Imagine if you were empowered to take advantage of these new database technologies, when and where it makes sense.
Believe me, cloud databases and the NoSQL movement is not a passing fad. It will have an impact on the way you do business – maybe not today, but not as far in the future as you might think.
Check it out. And as always, I welcome your feedback.
Enjoy,
-Kev
Google Wave is Dead. Long Live the Wave!
Monday, August 9th, 2010
I Never Could Hang 10 (Minutes) on Google Wave
While enduring an endless series of flight delays and disgruntled passengers in the Baltimore airport that was my own personal travel hell on the evening of Thursday, August 5th, I came across this interesting and important article:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/google-kills-wave-its-collaboration-tool/?ref=technology
Even if you don’t read the article, you can see from the URL that Google has decided to put an end to the collaboration experiment known as Wave. Wave will be available through the end of the year and most of its major components are now available as open source, should any devotees choose to continue developing the code base. However, Wave didn’t reach the critical mass that Google was looking for and, without that critical mass of users, it wasn’t seeing a lot of innovation or updates to the features or UI. I view Google’s reach of 1M users as a “failure” with a bit of grin. How many other vendors out there would consider 1M users too few? Otoh, if they wanted really wide adoption, why in the world did they require a private invitation? Superior products are frequently hampered by inferior marketing and market delivery, this being a really good example.
Slide to the Rescue?
More Fun than Google Slide?
I also feel the need to point out that I have a lot of respect for Google giving the old heave-ho to a product that needs to go. Many companies cling to a great idea, funneling huge amounts of resources into what everyone else can see as a black hole. Failure, under vibrant and forward thinking leadership, is only success delayed. Read Google’s take on the situation here. Certainly, this means we’ll see Google pushing their new social media acquisition, Slide, much more as well.
And, since many of the technological bits of Wave will live on, I’m sure we’ll see Slide advance in interesting ways.
Frankly, I found the general idea of Wave to be fascinating and powerful. But after spending quite a bit of time, like at least 20 minutes, tinkering around with it, I still had no idea how to do anything with it. I was so motivated to use it that I almost watched one of the videos that they’d posted to train you. But honestly, am I just ridiculously jaded or has the overall market for cloud-based apps moved the bar for ease-of-use that anything that takes more than 15 minutes to figure out is drama? I hate to say it, but I think the answer is a resounding “YES”. By extension, I think that this is the main reason that email still trumps all other methods of collaboration. (Yes, that includes Microsoft SharePoint too for all you fanboys.) That is, email does not disrupt any existing workflows, it has a clean UI, it doesn’t make you learn new ways of working, and it’s so widespread that you’re not hampered by a product that has a very limited user base.
Great Idea Leads To Great Product Success, Right?
The Graveyard of Ideas
I also feel that Google Wave is a good example of a technological solution looking for a problem, as well as a product looking for a marketing message. When launching a product, it’s crucial to have a crystal clear message to a well-defined audience. Any ambiguity in the message or muddling of the audience can spell doom. And, IMO, Google clearly missed the boat on both counts. Many of their demos were all about sharing photos. Uh, ever heard of Facebook, n’est pas? Then again, many later PR was about collaboration. Then how come we didn’t get smokin’ hot project management demos? A book that I recommend called The Innovator’s Prescription (website is here) says it very well:
“The graveyard of failed products and services is populated by things that people *should* have wanted–if only they could have been convinced those things were good for them. The home-run products in the marketing hall of fame, in contrast, are concepts that helped people more affordably, effortlessly, swiftly, and effectively do what they already had been trying to get done.” (Christensen, The Innovator’s Prescription, p. 16)
I really like Christensen’s point. So many people who build products focus on the “should” of a product, as in “this should make a lot of people happy”, over and above providing an effortless aid to people’s daily tasks. This leads me to a topic for another day, user-interface design. But enough writing for now. It’s bed time.
So what are your thoughts? Do you think other factors contributed to Wave’s decline?
Thanks!
-Kevin
Twitter @kekline
