It seems strange talking about business continuity planning for mainframe sites because most of them created their plan back in the days when BCP was called DR (Disaster Recovery). And although, for mainframe sites, things don’t seem to have changed to any great extent in perhaps as much as 30 years, the truth is, they have. And it’s a good idea to re-evaluate the Business Continuity Plan now.
In fact, it’s probably a good idea to start from the beginning, in terms of planning, and see what systems you have in place that needs to be available for the organization to continue in business, and how long you can be ‘down’ for. It was often a joke that non-mainframe sites had rooms full of servers running Linux and/or Windows servers and no-one knew what exactly ran on what hardware – and yet, something similar can be the case with mainframes. There is nowadays quite a disconnect between what an end user views as a single transaction and how the subsystems may see it. An end user may simply need to access some data – but, for that to happen, the transaction may start in CICS, access DB2 data, go back to CICS, involve IMS, go back to CICS, access some VSAM files, and finally end up in CICS again. So subsystem-level recovery can lead to confusion.
But let’s start at the beginning. What’s the first thing to do? Identify the business assets that need to be protected, then assess how business critical each process is and create a priority list. Next find the data and technology that’s needed for the business process to occur. Armed with that list, you can set objectives for their recovery, and design strategies and services that can be used to restore access to data for the applications and end users who need them. This is probably easier said than done because it also has to be achieved within time frames that mean your organization stays in business.
You need to be able to run the applications on probably new working processors, you need to get them talking to the latest version of the data, and you need to get your users connected to the applications. The options for how to do this range from cheap to hugely expensive. Like all insurance, you don’t want to have to make use of it, but when you do, you want it to cover everything. So what are your choices? You can do nothing – definitely the cheapest, until things go wrong and then it’s probably the end of the company staying in business. You can use a service bureau or another site. This again is bit like hoping nothing will go wrong, but if it does, you have some way of staying business until you can get your own hardware up and running. You need to ensure the other site is not in the same building or even city – earthquakes and other natural disasters do happen. You could have a cold standby site. This a dearer option, but once everything is powered up, you’re pretty much back in business. The dearest option is the hot standby site, where you basically copy everything to it as it happens on the main site. This hot site can continue running the business for you at a moment’s notice. If you’re a bank or similar, this is what you need. Your users just experience a small hiccough and they continue working. They connect to the new site without realizing anything has changed.
And that is your first big decision over with. The next step is to look at individual systems (such as IMS and CICS) and see how each of those can failover to the back-up site. Look into how you can ensure data is correct, and how in-flight tasks can have their data backed out and the whole task restarted. How quickly can communications be switched across to the back-up site? And what are the chances of both sites being hit by the same disaster?
And then you need to practice the BCP and see what you forgot in your plan. Which pieces of kit do you use that aren’t standard and can’t be replicated? There are so many things that can go wrong at each site because the set-up can be so different (while being superficially so similar). Who has access to the BCP? Who needs access to the BCP? What happens if a key person is doing a charity sleepover in some rundown part of town and hasn’t got a phone with them? What happens if your company is being attacked by terrorists of hacktivists or disgruntled ex-employees?
There’s lots to consider. But the first step is to re-visit your Business Continuity Plan – and do it soon.
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Sunday, 3 August 2014
Monday, 25 March 2013
Social businesses
What is a social business? Wikipedia tells me that a social business was first defined by Prof Muhammad Yunus as a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to address a social objective within the highly regulated marketplace of today. A wider definition includes any business having a social rather than financial objective. Or a social enterprise can be defined as a commercial activity by socially minded organizations. Perhaps a better definition these days is a business that has adopted social networking tools and practices for internal and external functions across their organization.
The IBM Web site tells us that: “Social business technologies help people connect, communicate, and share information. Becoming a leader in your marketplace means using social solutions to transform how business gets done – driving cost savings, increasing revenue, and cultivating competitive advantages.” That definitely sounds like a good thing.
In a report from Altimeter entitled The Evolution of Social Business: Six Stages of Social Business Transformation, it’s suggested that many social strategies are not linked to business goals, but are instead often driven by a “social for social’s sake” orientation. The report notes that, even when goals are aligned, social initiatives frequently must deal with a lack of defined strategy, governance, or funding. The report suggest six stages a company has to go through to become a social business:
Interestingly, there are products like Yammer (www.yammer.com), which Microsoft bought last year, Chatter, and others, that offer private social networks for organizations.
IBM VPs Jeff Schick and Sandy Carter were on stage at IBM Connect 2013 showing off the capabilities in IBM’s social business platform. It seems that companies are combining social technologies, the cloud, mobile, and analytics to create a flexible, intelligent framework for making the most of social connections. In an IBM survey of CEOs, 57% picked social business as a top priority and nearly three quarters (73%) are making significant investments in analysing data.
According to Jeff Schick: “A disconnect between how we live our lives – through digital connections and sharing – and how we work isn’t sustainable. Particularly since the new generation of workers who will fill companies’ ranks don’t know any other way of interacting and working than social media. The rate of productivity, innovation, and employee retention will increasingly depend on who can master this coming age of social business.”
For an organization to just have a social media strategy isn’t enough. The organization must transform itself into a social business to ensure its continued success.
The IBM Web site tells us that: “Social business technologies help people connect, communicate, and share information. Becoming a leader in your marketplace means using social solutions to transform how business gets done – driving cost savings, increasing revenue, and cultivating competitive advantages.” That definitely sounds like a good thing.
In a report from Altimeter entitled The Evolution of Social Business: Six Stages of Social Business Transformation, it’s suggested that many social strategies are not linked to business goals, but are instead often driven by a “social for social’s sake” orientation. The report notes that, even when goals are aligned, social initiatives frequently must deal with a lack of defined strategy, governance, or funding. The report suggest six stages a company has to go through to become a social business:
- Planning – understand how customers use social channels and prioritize strategic goals where social can have the most impact.
- Presence – amplify existing marketing efforts and encourage sharing
- Engagement – drive considerations to purchase and provide direct support with internal employee engagement.
- Formalized – set governance for social, create discipline and process, and have strategic business goals.
- Strategic – scale across business units and move into HR, sales, finance, and supply chain.
- Converged – social drives transformation and integrates social philosophy into all aspects of the enterprise.
Interestingly, there are products like Yammer (www.yammer.com), which Microsoft bought last year, Chatter, and others, that offer private social networks for organizations.
IBM VPs Jeff Schick and Sandy Carter were on stage at IBM Connect 2013 showing off the capabilities in IBM’s social business platform. It seems that companies are combining social technologies, the cloud, mobile, and analytics to create a flexible, intelligent framework for making the most of social connections. In an IBM survey of CEOs, 57% picked social business as a top priority and nearly three quarters (73%) are making significant investments in analysing data.
According to Jeff Schick: “A disconnect between how we live our lives – through digital connections and sharing – and how we work isn’t sustainable. Particularly since the new generation of workers who will fill companies’ ranks don’t know any other way of interacting and working than social media. The rate of productivity, innovation, and employee retention will increasingly depend on who can master this coming age of social business.”
For an organization to just have a social media strategy isn’t enough. The organization must transform itself into a social business to ensure its continued success.
Sunday, 13 May 2012
How’s business?
Since 2008, the world seems to have lurched its way from one financial crisis to the next. In the UK they’re talking about double dip recession. In Spain, things look difficult. And in Greece, things look impossible! So how are the big mainframe companies weathering the storm? Are we looking at an extinction-level event? Are the big players (the metaphorically dominant dinosaurs) going to be replaced by smaller companies (the metaphorical mammals)?
For people who like this kind of thing, there are meant to have been five mass extinctions in the Earth’s history. There’s the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (about 65.5 million years ago) when about 75% of species became extinct, seeing the end of the dinosaurs, and mammals and birds becoming the dominant land vertebrates.
There’s also the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event (205 million years ago). The Permian–Triassic extinction event (251 million years ago), which is referred to as the ‘Great Dying’. The Late Devonian extinction was about 375–360 million years ago. And the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event was 450–440 million years ago.
BMC Software’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings fell 42%. On the dowside there was an increase in operating expenses, while on the up side they saw slightly improved revenue. It seems that cloud services bookings totalled $100 million for the year – 10% ahead of analysts’ projections. The company closed its acquisition of Numara Software, which added to revenue in the fourth quarter, and gave BMC additional IT management tools and distribution to mid-sized companies. BMC also has 25% more sales people than it had a year ago. Looking at the bottom line: for the quarter ended 31 March, BMC Software reported a profit of $70.7 million, or 43 cents a share, down from $122.5 million, or 67 cents a share, a year earlier.
CA Technologies’ fourth-quarter earnings increased from last year, helped mainly by lower income tax payments. Revenues for the quarter rose 5 percent from last year, but were mostly offset by increased product development and general expenses. Its fourth-quarter net income was $211 million or $0.45 per share, compared to $188 million or $0.37 per share last year. Its net income jumped by 12%.
IBM recently reported flat revenues as its hardware business struggled in the first quarter of 2012. Revenues increased by just 0.3 percent to $24.7billion from the same period last year, although profits increased by 7.1 per cent to $3bn. IBM’s figures for each of its major divisions were generally positive, especially its cloud services, which saw revenue double, however its hardware business suffered a 6.7 percent decline in revenue to $3.7billion. IBM has raised its 2012 full-year earnings per share forecast to at least $15.00.
I couldn’t find any figures for Progress|DataDirect.
So, it seems financially to be a bit mixed rather than anywhere near an extinction for the big beasts of the mainframe software world. There may be a number of small mammals running around their feet, but these metaphorical dinosaurs are far from fighting for their very existence. It’s always worth remembering that dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrate for around 135 million years. Mainframes have only been with us since the 1960s They’ve still got quite a long way to go!
For people who like this kind of thing, there are meant to have been five mass extinctions in the Earth’s history. There’s the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (about 65.5 million years ago) when about 75% of species became extinct, seeing the end of the dinosaurs, and mammals and birds becoming the dominant land vertebrates.
There’s also the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event (205 million years ago). The Permian–Triassic extinction event (251 million years ago), which is referred to as the ‘Great Dying’. The Late Devonian extinction was about 375–360 million years ago. And the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event was 450–440 million years ago.
BMC Software’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings fell 42%. On the dowside there was an increase in operating expenses, while on the up side they saw slightly improved revenue. It seems that cloud services bookings totalled $100 million for the year – 10% ahead of analysts’ projections. The company closed its acquisition of Numara Software, which added to revenue in the fourth quarter, and gave BMC additional IT management tools and distribution to mid-sized companies. BMC also has 25% more sales people than it had a year ago. Looking at the bottom line: for the quarter ended 31 March, BMC Software reported a profit of $70.7 million, or 43 cents a share, down from $122.5 million, or 67 cents a share, a year earlier.
CA Technologies’ fourth-quarter earnings increased from last year, helped mainly by lower income tax payments. Revenues for the quarter rose 5 percent from last year, but were mostly offset by increased product development and general expenses. Its fourth-quarter net income was $211 million or $0.45 per share, compared to $188 million or $0.37 per share last year. Its net income jumped by 12%.
IBM recently reported flat revenues as its hardware business struggled in the first quarter of 2012. Revenues increased by just 0.3 percent to $24.7billion from the same period last year, although profits increased by 7.1 per cent to $3bn. IBM’s figures for each of its major divisions were generally positive, especially its cloud services, which saw revenue double, however its hardware business suffered a 6.7 percent decline in revenue to $3.7billion. IBM has raised its 2012 full-year earnings per share forecast to at least $15.00.
I couldn’t find any figures for Progress|DataDirect.
So, it seems financially to be a bit mixed rather than anywhere near an extinction for the big beasts of the mainframe software world. There may be a number of small mammals running around their feet, but these metaphorical dinosaurs are far from fighting for their very existence. It’s always worth remembering that dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrate for around 135 million years. Mainframes have only been with us since the 1960s They’ve still got quite a long way to go!
Sunday, 29 January 2012
Move over Google Docs, IBM’s back in the game!
Over the years, Microsoft has controlled the Office market – with Word and Excel being used everyday by millions of people. Even schools are teaching children to copy and paste etc using the familiar Microsoft products that they most likely also use at home.
People may fondly remember WordPerfect or VisiCalc, or may have tried OpenOffice and other alternatives to Microsoft, but for most organizations, the de facto standard has been MS Office.
And then, as the world became aware of cloud computing, those freethinkers at Google gave us GoogleDocs – an online equivalent for the basic Office functions. And the big advantage was that you could access your files from whichever computer you were on (provided you had Internet connectivity). There was no excuse about bringing the wrong memory stick and not having a copy of the document. I use the GoogleDoc plug-in to Office so that my files are stored in the cloud in case I need something at a client’s site.
Of course, Microsoft also has a cloud-based version of its Office suite called Microsoft Office 365.
But now IBM has thrown its hat in the ring. It has announced the beta of IBM Docs, which is tied into its SmartCloud for Social Business Suite. So how does IBM hit the ground running with its own Office suite? Well, it got its hands on Lotus Smartsuite in 1995, when it also got Lotus Notes.
IBM Docs allows organizations to collaborate on word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. The plan is that there will only be a Web-based solution – no need for any browser plug-ins. In addition, its LotusLive has been rebadged as SmartCloud for Social Business. This provides users with easy access to social networking, file sharing, meetings, e-mail, calendars, and instant messaging.
The Web site at https://greenhouse.lotus.com/wpsgh/wcm/connect/lotus+greenhouse/lotus+greenhouse+next+site/home/labs/ibm+docs says: “IBM Docs is a new office productivity suite for working on documents, spreadsheets and presentations – together – in the cloud. With IBM Docs there is no desktop software. You only need a browser and an account, and you are able to easily create professional looking documents and share them with others. IBM Docs is simple yet powerful – letting you get started quickly, but delivering the advanced features you need.
Once you’ve signed up, you can create and share documents, you can comment on documents, and you can assign parts of documents to teams to complete. In effect, everything you would look for in a cloud-based Office equivalent. Does it provide workflow features like Microsoft’s SharePoint? I don’t know the answer to that yet.
Will it work? It will be interesting to see. The linking with social networking is something that many enterprise organisations will find beneficial. There’s certainly room for another heavyweight to enter the fray. And it should be beneficial for us users if the big players offer more-and-more facilities for us to use as a way of keeping our interest and our business.
Sunday, 3 January 2010
Social media – a business tool
Social networks started off being ways to stay in contact with friends or make new friends. It also provided an easy way to share photos and therefore keep up with the activities of those friends that you see less often.
You can still do that, but nowadays social networks are becoming business tools and many organizations are already using them in that way. Intel, at the end of 2008, produced its social media guidelines and encouraged employees to use social media to get the corporate message out to as many people as possible.
So, if you’re not doing it already, what should you be doing? First of all there’s Twitter. Twitter was known only to a few people a year ago, but today it’s as well known as any other social media Web site. As you probably know, Twitter is a micro-blogging site allowing 140-digit messages to be sent. You have to publicize that you’re on Twitter so that people will “follow” you – ie read your tweets. You can tweet that you’re just enjoying a cup of coffee or whatever, but for business you probably want to tweet a news headline or an appointment date and time (like the next webinar or a conference). You then put a colon and a URL where people can read more details. It you have a series of tweets on the same topic, you can use hash tags (put a hash in front of a word that’s found in each tweet). And people can now re-tweet, which means they can pass on your tweet to their friends – extending the number of people who see your message. You can use a Twitter widget so your tweets appear in your Web page. That way people who browse your Web site can see the latest information you’re sharing. And you can use things like TweetDeck to see whether anyone else is tweeting about your company. You can find my tweets at twitter.com/t_eddolls.
One related thing with Twitter… it’s often a good idea to shorten URLs so they can be included with the text within the 140-character limit. Perhaps the two best-known sites for this are Bitly (bit.ly) and Tiny URL (www.tiny.cc). Example short URLs look like: http://bit.ly/6bVer5 or http://tiny.cc/MovBb. Other URL shortening organizations are available.
Facebook is also very useful for businesses. It’s easy to set up. I would recommend that you set up a new account so that anyone who becomes your friend doesn’t get access to pictures of you falling down drunk or whatever. Once you’ve set up a company name area on Facebook, anyone can become a fan. It also gives you the opportunity to post photos and meeting dates (in Events). You can also post information about your company and publish press releases, and use the “wall” to tie everything together. If you find people are putting negative comments, you will need to add positive ones so the bad ones disappear out of site further down the page. This can also be linked to Twitter. If you want to see a good example how it can be done, look for Marmite. I also include the Facebook widget on my home page as a second way of giving people up-to-date-information. You can become a fan of iTech-Ed here (http://www.facebook.com/pages/iTech-Ed-Ltd/201736748040?v=wall&ref=search).
In addition, you can have a presence on Linkedin (www.linkedin.com), Ecademy (www.ecademy.com), Fast Pitch (www.fastpitchnetworking.com), Plaxo (www.plaxo.com), Zoominfo (www.zoominfo.com), Naymz (www.naymz.com), and a host of other communities.
Get out there and blog. There are a few big blogging sites out there – Blogger (www.blogger.com), Typepad (www.typepad.com), and WordPress (wordpress.org) – and numerous others. Blogs can be used as ways of chatting about an event or a news item. It shows a friendly face for interacting with clients and potential clients. You should always Twitter a link to your blogs and put them on your corporate Facebook page.
You can also make all your news stories available through an RSS link. For example:
>a href="teblog.xml"
title="Subscribe to news about iTech-Ed" style=
"border:1px solid; border-color:#fc9 #630 #330 #f96; padding:0 3px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font:bold 12px; color:#fff; background:#f60; text-decoration:none; margin:4px;"<
RSS >/a<
This bit of code gives you a button without needing a graphic. You will need an XML file with it, and numerous examples can be found using Google.
You hope that your “fans” will be monitoring changes on your Web site, and you can do the same with rival organizations by using a feed aggregator. For example, Google Reader lets you subscribe to your favourite Web sites so new content comes to you when it's posted. Reader keeps track of which things you’ve read so that you only see unread items when you come back. If there’s a dark blue border around an item, Reader is marking that item as read.
Another thing to be thought about is shared content. If you have content (and by that I mean photos or videos) that could be shared with a wider audience, you can put it on sites like YouTube (www.youtube.com), Flickr (www.flickr.com), SlideShare, and others.
What about MySpace (www.myspace.com)? It gives you the opportunity to create a Web site and listen to music – but if you already have a Web site, I'm not sure what advantage the extra Web presence would give you.
Social bookmarking is very interesting. It's a mechanism that allows people to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of Web resources. Users save links to Web pages that they want to remember and/or share. Many social bookmarking services provide Web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users. Examples of these include Delicious (delicious.com), Digg (digg.com), Reddit (www.reddit.com), and StumbleUpon (StumbleUpon), but there are lots of others, with new ones arriving all the time. It’s a good idea to put these on news pages or blog pages, but they can go anywhere. However, this can become a bit of a nightmare because there are so many. I made a start by copying the icons and then using the following code (it went on, but you get the idea):
<a id="digg" title="Share this page on Digg" href="javascript:location.href='http://digg.com/submit?v=2&url='+encodeURIComponent(document.location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title)+' '"> <img src="digg.jpg" width="25" height="25" alt="Share this page on Digg" title="Share this page on Digg" style="border:0"/> </a>
<a id="stumble" title="Share this page on StumbleUpon" href="javascript:location.href='http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?v=2&url='+encodeURIComponent(document.location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title)+' '"> <img src="su.jpg" width="25" height="25" alt="Share this page on StumbleUpon" title="Share this page on StumbleUpon" style="border:0"/> </a>
<a id="delicious" title="Share this page on del.icio.us" href="javascript:location.href='http://del.icio.us/post?v=2&url='+encodeURIComponent(document.location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title)+' '"> <img src="del.jpg" width="25" height="25" alt="Share this page on del.icio.us" title="Share this page on del.icio.us" style="border:0"/> </a>
<a id="reddit" title="Share this page on Reddit" href="javascript:location.href='http://reddit.com/submit?v=2&url='+encodeURIComponent(document.location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title)+' '"> <img src="reddit.jpg" width="25" height="25" alt="Share this page on Reddit" title="Share this page on Reddit" style="border:0"/> </a>
This is not the best way to do it!
My advice would be to use a single button that links to multiple bookmarking sites, for example AddToAny (www.addtoany.com) or AddThis (www.addthis.com)
While making sure that staff adhere to guidelines, I would recommend any organization raises its profile and gets into social media – until the next big thing comes along.
You can still do that, but nowadays social networks are becoming business tools and many organizations are already using them in that way. Intel, at the end of 2008, produced its social media guidelines and encouraged employees to use social media to get the corporate message out to as many people as possible.
So, if you’re not doing it already, what should you be doing? First of all there’s Twitter. Twitter was known only to a few people a year ago, but today it’s as well known as any other social media Web site. As you probably know, Twitter is a micro-blogging site allowing 140-digit messages to be sent. You have to publicize that you’re on Twitter so that people will “follow” you – ie read your tweets. You can tweet that you’re just enjoying a cup of coffee or whatever, but for business you probably want to tweet a news headline or an appointment date and time (like the next webinar or a conference). You then put a colon and a URL where people can read more details. It you have a series of tweets on the same topic, you can use hash tags (put a hash in front of a word that’s found in each tweet). And people can now re-tweet, which means they can pass on your tweet to their friends – extending the number of people who see your message. You can use a Twitter widget so your tweets appear in your Web page. That way people who browse your Web site can see the latest information you’re sharing. And you can use things like TweetDeck to see whether anyone else is tweeting about your company. You can find my tweets at twitter.com/t_eddolls.
One related thing with Twitter… it’s often a good idea to shorten URLs so they can be included with the text within the 140-character limit. Perhaps the two best-known sites for this are Bitly (bit.ly) and Tiny URL (www.tiny.cc). Example short URLs look like: http://bit.ly/6bVer5 or http://tiny.cc/MovBb. Other URL shortening organizations are available.
Facebook is also very useful for businesses. It’s easy to set up. I would recommend that you set up a new account so that anyone who becomes your friend doesn’t get access to pictures of you falling down drunk or whatever. Once you’ve set up a company name area on Facebook, anyone can become a fan. It also gives you the opportunity to post photos and meeting dates (in Events). You can also post information about your company and publish press releases, and use the “wall” to tie everything together. If you find people are putting negative comments, you will need to add positive ones so the bad ones disappear out of site further down the page. This can also be linked to Twitter. If you want to see a good example how it can be done, look for Marmite. I also include the Facebook widget on my home page as a second way of giving people up-to-date-information. You can become a fan of iTech-Ed here (http://www.facebook.com/pages/iTech-Ed-Ltd/201736748040?v=wall&ref=search).
In addition, you can have a presence on Linkedin (www.linkedin.com), Ecademy (www.ecademy.com), Fast Pitch (www.fastpitchnetworking.com), Plaxo (www.plaxo.com), Zoominfo (www.zoominfo.com), Naymz (www.naymz.com), and a host of other communities.
Get out there and blog. There are a few big blogging sites out there – Blogger (www.blogger.com), Typepad (www.typepad.com), and WordPress (wordpress.org) – and numerous others. Blogs can be used as ways of chatting about an event or a news item. It shows a friendly face for interacting with clients and potential clients. You should always Twitter a link to your blogs and put them on your corporate Facebook page.
You can also make all your news stories available through an RSS link. For example:
>a href="teblog.xml"
title="Subscribe to news about iTech-Ed" style=
"border:1px solid; border-color:#fc9 #630 #330 #f96; padding:0 3px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font:bold 12px; color:#fff; background:#f60; text-decoration:none; margin:4px;"<
RSS >/a<
This bit of code gives you a button without needing a graphic. You will need an XML file with it, and numerous examples can be found using Google.
You hope that your “fans” will be monitoring changes on your Web site, and you can do the same with rival organizations by using a feed aggregator. For example, Google Reader lets you subscribe to your favourite Web sites so new content comes to you when it's posted. Reader keeps track of which things you’ve read so that you only see unread items when you come back. If there’s a dark blue border around an item, Reader is marking that item as read.
Another thing to be thought about is shared content. If you have content (and by that I mean photos or videos) that could be shared with a wider audience, you can put it on sites like YouTube (www.youtube.com), Flickr (www.flickr.com), SlideShare, and others.
What about MySpace (www.myspace.com)? It gives you the opportunity to create a Web site and listen to music – but if you already have a Web site, I'm not sure what advantage the extra Web presence would give you.
Social bookmarking is very interesting. It's a mechanism that allows people to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of Web resources. Users save links to Web pages that they want to remember and/or share. Many social bookmarking services provide Web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users. Examples of these include Delicious (delicious.com), Digg (digg.com), Reddit (www.reddit.com), and StumbleUpon (StumbleUpon), but there are lots of others, with new ones arriving all the time. It’s a good idea to put these on news pages or blog pages, but they can go anywhere. However, this can become a bit of a nightmare because there are so many. I made a start by copying the icons and then using the following code (it went on, but you get the idea):
<a id="digg" title="Share this page on Digg" href="javascript:location.href='http://digg.com/submit?v=2&url='+encodeURIComponent(document.location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title)+' '"> <img src="digg.jpg" width="25" height="25" alt="Share this page on Digg" title="Share this page on Digg" style="border:0"/> </a>
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This is not the best way to do it!
My advice would be to use a single button that links to multiple bookmarking sites, for example AddToAny (www.addtoany.com) or AddThis (www.addthis.com)
While making sure that staff adhere to guidelines, I would recommend any organization raises its profile and gets into social media – until the next big thing comes along.
Sunday, 6 December 2009
IBM launches London Analytics Solution Centre
I was invited to Southbank for IBM’s launch of its London-based Analytics Solution Centre – joining six other similar centres across the globe. The morning session included an introduction by Carolyn Taylor, and presentations by Brendan Riley (IBM’s head honcho in the UK), Lord Peter Mandelson (who spoke very well), and Cambridge University’s Professor Andy Neely. After a short Q&A we were shown some very interesting demos.
So what are these Analytics Solution Centres? We were told that the centres will help IBM apply its advanced analytics expertise to the complex business challenges facing its clients. You’re perhaps no clearer after I’ve just given the official answer. So let me try to explain in another way...
They were suggesting that there are lots of little bits of information floating around that could be tied together because this bigger picture would then help organizations make better decisions. An example we saw on video was of traffic flow. How it would theoretically be possible to measure the movement made by people’s mobile phones to measure the actual flow of traffic along busy streets. Using this information, faster alternative routing information could then be sent to, perhaps, the sat navs in the cars. That way, everyone would arrive at their destinations faster.
Another example that was demo’d was about flooding in Galway Bay. Previously, the local harbour master might have decided that a particular combination of rainy weather, winds, and high tides put the town at risk of flooding. Now, sensors in buoys are linked to other information to come up with a much better picture of when flooding might occur. It also links into other systems measuring water quality. And further system links local fish restaurants with local fisherman, who can say what fish they are catching, and the restaurant can put those fish on their menu for that evening!
We also saw the ORX (Operational Riskdata eXchange Association) system – which is used to help members quantify risk exposure. It was something banks needed following the Basel II accord. The banks’ risk information is securely and anonymously exchanged, and the banks are from 18 different countries. The consequence of this initiative is that banks now have a much better understanding of their exposure to potentially damaging operational risk.
Andy Neely stressed the need for getting the organization architecture right. He suggested that getting IT right saw an 8% improvement, and getting the organization right also saw an 8% improvement. However, getting them both right at the same time led to a 34% improvement!
The motto of the presentation, if I might call it that, was “predict and act”. The suggestion was that currently organizations tended to sense something was going on and then respond.
The Analytics Solution Centre in London will comprise around 400 consultants, software specialists, and mathematicians, and will include recent graduates. This number will increase as business increases.
Other Analytics Solution Centres can be found in Berlin, Beijing, Dallas, Tokyo, New York, and Washington DC.
The whole thing looks very exciting and an area destined to grow.
On a completely unrelated matter... If you’re on Facebook, why not become a fan of my company, iTech-Ed Ltd. Click on the link - http://tiny.cc/Q09yi - and click the fan button. And if you want to follow my tweets, it’s twitter.com/t_eddolls.
So what are these Analytics Solution Centres? We were told that the centres will help IBM apply its advanced analytics expertise to the complex business challenges facing its clients. You’re perhaps no clearer after I’ve just given the official answer. So let me try to explain in another way...
They were suggesting that there are lots of little bits of information floating around that could be tied together because this bigger picture would then help organizations make better decisions. An example we saw on video was of traffic flow. How it would theoretically be possible to measure the movement made by people’s mobile phones to measure the actual flow of traffic along busy streets. Using this information, faster alternative routing information could then be sent to, perhaps, the sat navs in the cars. That way, everyone would arrive at their destinations faster.
Another example that was demo’d was about flooding in Galway Bay. Previously, the local harbour master might have decided that a particular combination of rainy weather, winds, and high tides put the town at risk of flooding. Now, sensors in buoys are linked to other information to come up with a much better picture of when flooding might occur. It also links into other systems measuring water quality. And further system links local fish restaurants with local fisherman, who can say what fish they are catching, and the restaurant can put those fish on their menu for that evening!
We also saw the ORX (Operational Riskdata eXchange Association) system – which is used to help members quantify risk exposure. It was something banks needed following the Basel II accord. The banks’ risk information is securely and anonymously exchanged, and the banks are from 18 different countries. The consequence of this initiative is that banks now have a much better understanding of their exposure to potentially damaging operational risk.
Andy Neely stressed the need for getting the organization architecture right. He suggested that getting IT right saw an 8% improvement, and getting the organization right also saw an 8% improvement. However, getting them both right at the same time led to a 34% improvement!
The motto of the presentation, if I might call it that, was “predict and act”. The suggestion was that currently organizations tended to sense something was going on and then respond.
The Analytics Solution Centre in London will comprise around 400 consultants, software specialists, and mathematicians, and will include recent graduates. This number will increase as business increases.
Other Analytics Solution Centres can be found in Berlin, Beijing, Dallas, Tokyo, New York, and Washington DC.
The whole thing looks very exciting and an area destined to grow.
On a completely unrelated matter... If you’re on Facebook, why not become a fan of my company, iTech-Ed Ltd. Click on the link - http://tiny.cc/Q09yi - and click the fan button. And if you want to follow my tweets, it’s twitter.com/t_eddolls.
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