Open Source Insights on Enterprise Software Business Models

A recent Slashdot posting pointed to a presentation from EclipseCon earlier this month, given by Brent Williams, an equity research analyst who used to be in the software business. A few things really caught my eye … Take some time to flip through the original presentation; there are some interesting insights about the nature of the enterprise software industry (the SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft crowd). Three of the lightbulbs that went off in my mind ... (Slide 10) [By folding…

Misapplying the Pareto principle

8 January, 2006
Business Value of IT, Project Management
2 Comments

Here's an interesting phenomenon I've encountered before ... When analyzing a specific section of a business, people seem to naturally focus attention and conversation on the top two or three customers/products/vendors that together represent (say) 20% of the revenues/costs/contracts. Our objective is to look at the data and identify opportunities (increase revenues, cut COGS, aggregate contracts); unfortunately, processing the data for these customers/products/vendors is currently a 100% manual task. Of course; this is why there is apparently so much "opportunity"…

Of course we can pay for that … if it makes business sense

Had a good conversation with a vendor last week. They were looking to increase their business with us, no surprise there, but the rep was actually a bit cynical (in a nice way), and (probably wisely) asked directly what the chances were that we could actually get Project X off the ground? I've seen these great ideas start, but then some manager complains that they have no budget for this kind of thing. In retrospect, it is almost a rude…

Open Source as bargaining chip – driving business value of IT

I had a fun time this week proposing an open source alternative for an aging component of our EAI infrastructure. The reaction was so classic - the instant some IT folks saw the words "open source" in large type on the piece of paper, they smiled, crossed their arms, and tut-tutted the idea away. Oh, I heard all the classic shoot-down arguments ... "... critical piece of our day to day business transactions ..." "... I rarely need to call,…

Subdivide a huge project list to simplify the prioritization process

27 October, 2005
Business Value of IT, PMO
0 Comments

A classic problem for many project-oriented organizations (IT, R&D, Engineering, Operations) ... how can resource prioritization be simplified, yet repeatable? It's a fairly involved topic, but a common approach is to group projects into a workable number of "chunks" ... we'll use the term Initiatives. How will this help? Challenge: Clarify the team's priorities, alignment, and resource levels - without going into the details The CEO asks a question – what Projects are on the to-do list for IT? [Do…

You can run but you can’t hide

I sent out notes to folks talking about my new situation, and some came back with interesting comments. Here's one from W, a brilliant guy with Big-6 background and plenty of business acumen. However, he (like me) is a coder at heart, and really wants to focus on the technology (not like me). More power to him - but his eMail had a telling statement ... ... this is my 5th month at [BigCo] and all is going well so…

Free as in … the Open Source Refrain – Improved!

I'm not going to recount the history and foundations of open source software, just point out that the word "free" has long been a point of contention when folks talk about "free" software. For clarity, the open-source crowd will refer to ... Free (as in Speech), meaning the user's freedom to run, copy, distribute a piece of software Free (as in Beer), meaning the software is available at no cost BTW, the world is really into their free beer -…