Through Expanded Collaboration, SAP and NetApp to Enable Customers to Accelerate Deployment and Delivery of an Agile Data Infrastructure for SAP Applications In an effort to accelerate the deployment and delivery of database, analytics and application solutions, SAP AG and NetApp today announced they are deepening their collaboration with the intent to support next-generation ERP
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SAP and NetApp Deepen Strategic Partnership to Integrate Storage
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Alcatel-Lucent Confirms Ben Verwaayen To Step Down As CEO
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Enterprises Remain Focused On Internal Clouds In 2013: Research
Filed under: News : Cloud Computing
47 percent of surveyed enterprises list internal clouds among top projects in 2013 potential cost-savings of public cloud still met with scepticism. Read more
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Energy Efficiency
Energy Efficiency Table of Contents 1. Why are we so interested in Energy Efficient Data Centers? 2. How Data Centers can use on-site power generation to reduce the cost of energy and backup generators 3. Concerned About Data Center Energy Efficiency? ENERGY STAR Can Help! 4. Data Center Incentives for Going Green 5. Is ‘economy mode’ a good UPS option for ICT operators? 6.
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Oil & Gas Cos To Spend $1 Bn In Cybersecurity By 2018
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Using Elastic Transcoder in Amazon Web Services
If you ever wanted a painless way of transcoding video to some 120 different devices, then the new Elastic Transcoder service from Amazon Web Services is the service you are looking for.
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Why Are We So Interested in Energy Efficiency?
Take your pick of studies and publications listing priorities for data center operators in 2013 and beyond—energy will almost certainly be in there somewhere. It has become a perennial issue for companies, and given the various economic and political factors surrounding it, this situation is unlikely to change anytime soon. So, why is energy such
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Inauguration Security
A first-person account of the security surrounding the second inauguration of President Obama.
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IBM And Emerson Coming Together For Data Center Efficiency
Emerson Network Power has announced coming together with IBM as far as their software capabilities are concerned to help optimize data center efficiency. The two will combine IBM’s ITSM or IT service management and Emerson’s Trellis platform. This combination will help in optimizing data center efficiency by acting as an integrated DCIM or data center
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Configuring an Amazon Web Services Security Group
Security Groups are just like firewalls, you can set what you want to allow into your system or not on both public and private interfaces.
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Update of Ola Hallengren's Maintenance Tools (Still Free Too)
SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 and SQL Server 2012 SP1 introduced sys.dm_db_stats_properties. This DMV is a new way to check the number of rows that have been modified since the last time a set of statistics was updated. It is described here: (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj553546.aspx)
In the latest version of Ola's tools, he's made use of this new DMV for customers that are on one of these SQL Server versions. For customers on earlier versions, he continues to use sys.sysindexes in the same way he did previously.
Another notable change is that the new version works better when combined with log shipping on the same databases (avoids options that would break log shipping chains).
Ola's tools have been gaining a well-deserved reputation, particularly given the price (ie free).
You can read more about the most recent version of the solution at http://ola.hallengren.com/versions.html or download it at http://ola.hallengren.com/scripts/MaintenanceSolution.sql
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On Video: BlackBerry Balance Demo On The Z10
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More New Renaissance
On the Innovation blog Indoor Positioning Technology “Freeloaders” Big Data and Florists The GE Global Innovation Barometer The 787 Turbulence The New England Patriots: Butts in stadium seats House of Moves: Allergy as a video game Samsung in the Enterprise
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SavvisDirect Launches Private Cloud For Enterprise Developers
SavvisDirect AppGrid lets companies test and develop in a private cloud, avoiding the security and control issues that come with working in a public cloud.
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5 Social Best Practices From Cisco
Cisco social chief shares advice on listening, engagement and more.
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New JobVite products: Engage and Refer
Yesterday, I had a chance to talk again with Dan Finnigan, CEO of JobVite. JobVite’s been a pioneer in connecting social media, workers’ connections to other prospective workers, and, recruiters for years. Their core product defined how employers could tap into the social connections of workers to find more people just like the best and [...]
New JobVite products: Engage and Refer is copyrighted by Brian Sommer. If you are reading this outside your feed reader, you are likely witnessing illegal content theft.
Enterprise Irregulars is sponsored by Salesforce.com, Workday and Zoho.
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First spring conference: PASS Business Analytics Conference and SQL Bits #passbac #sqlbits #sqlpass
Spring is a conferences’ season and the upcoming one is no exception. I will be speaking at PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013, which will be the first event this year, so I’d like to spend a few words about my sessions.
PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013
April 10-12, 2013 | Chicago, IL – United States
This conference is targeted to Business Analytics professionals. Thus, I expect to meet both BI Developers, Excel Advanced Users, Data Analyst and, of course, the new Data Scientist role (if you have a business card with such a definition, please drop me one, so I can demonstrate to skeptic people that this figure actually exists!). I have two sessions:
- Modern Data Warehousing Strategy
- April 11th, 2013 – 1:30 pm – Chicago Ballroom VIII
Track: Strategy and Architecture - The recent introduction of new technologies such as PowerPivot, the BI Semantic Model, and columnstore indexes in SQL Server and advances in self-service business intelligence and big data might be considered threats to the classic data warehouse ecosystem. In reality, a good data warehouse is still the best starting point for any kind of analysis, but we do need to update our strategy for data warehouse implementation to fit the requirements of this new era. This session will start the conversation about what a modern strategy for data warehousing can and should be. What type of data modeling should we use for the data warehouse? What is the role of data marts? Does the use of technologies such as PowerPivot or Analysis Services Tabular affect the way we should model our data? Do columnstore indexes remove the need for an analytical server like Analysis Services? We will discuss these and other questions, offering an updated approach to the data warehouse modeling methodology.
- Self-Service Data Modeling
- April 12th, 2013 – 1:30 pm – Sheraton Ballroom I & II
Track: Data Analytics and Visualization -
Self-service business intelligence looks promising, empowering information workers to grab amazing insights from data. But are Excel 2013 and DAX language knowledge enough to analyze data? The answer in most cases is no – information workers will also need an ability to properly model their data and the skill to use some new tools to reshape data in the correct way. In this session, we will analyze some common problem scenarios where data analysis is difficult due to the shape of the model and see how to solve them.
In theory, I expect two different audiences at the two sessions, but I know that there will be people attending both, especially who provides tools to end users. I’d like to receive feedback about what you would expect to see in such sessions (regardless you will attend or not!), so that I check if I defined the correct expectations for the audience.
If you want to attend, register before March 15 in order to get a discounted price. See you in Chicago!
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Filming for TV: Some thoughts on process ownership
Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will realise that I do, occasionally, like to look into things that happen in every day life and try to understand the process issues inherent within them. I want to move onto something related, but a little different.
Television.
I was fortunate enough recently to spend time working on a new comedy series to be produced for UK television. It was filmed (as many comedy programs are nowadays) in from of a live studio audience.
This is different to a lot of things I have filmed in the past for two reasons
1) There is a live studio audience!
2) The dynamics of command and control are very subtly different.
Let me explain.
In ‘filmed’ television (‘Downton Abbey’, for example), the director is in charge of the filming production and the first assistant director (1st AD) is in charge of running the set. The chain of command goes Director --> 1st AD --> heads of department. It’s a little slow, but it works and it keep the unions happy. Filming is done with one camera at a time (usually) and the final footage is edited together separately for transmission.
Television works quite differently. For a start there are more cameras. On the show I did recently there were five cameras running independently. These were big broadcast cameras which didn’t have on-board recording facilities. The signal from their feed was sent to a control room where they were mixed together by a producer. He is - effectively - editing the show as it is being filmed.
Takes are quite long and complex involving a lot of camera movement and choreography. If a camera isn’t in the right place at the right time the take is blown and we have to go again.
So far, so good. But here’s the rub. I couldn’t work out who was in charge on the set. Sure there is a director and 1st AD. These two worked together in a similar way to on a film set. But there was also the producer character who was involved in all the artistic decisions because he had to make it all work in the control room. The issue came when the Director wanted one thing and the producer wanted another. It became a case of review & decide, cajole & threaten in order to reach a compromise. And a compromise is never good, artistically.
But the whole discussion got me to thinking about a topic which is close to my heart : Process Ownership. I think it's accepted that processes need to have somebody responsible for them. But is it accepted what the scope of process ownership should be? I don't think so.
I think that process ownership is oftentimes equated to project ownership at the senior level. In many cases someone is allocated project ownership at C-level purely as a way of ensuring that the project is seen as having “clout”. In reality the assigned C-level executive has minimal, if any, ’skin in the game’ for this project.
And so it is with processes.
An executive Vice President for finance might be nominated as the process owner for a process in the finance department, but - in the big scheme of things - has very little, if any, involvement in the day to day running or execution of the process. Some would say that this is fine - after all, why would a senior executive need to be involved at that level? But I have a different opinion. I am sure that the are arguments that can equate the ROI of having the exec manage a process vs delegating, and these are all totally valid calculations.
But they miss the big picture.
Process is not something that happens in parts of an organisation. Process is something that happens across the whole organisation and having someone who can manage that at the organisational level makes a lot of sense. Any lower in the organisation and you start to suffer from the problem of silo mentality and not invented here syndrome. But at the senior level you have someone who has both the executive clout and the mandate to manage a process from start to finish right across the organisation.
However the logical extension of this is that there are going to be senior executives who mange processes but who will not manage them appropriately. Take, for example, a senior Vice President of Finance who is managing a process which touches more areas than just finance. If a change needs to be made he will, most likely (and politically) favour his own department if anything needs to be done that is positive, and favour other departments if negative changes need to be made. This is human nature. Of course the simple way to do that is by following the old guideline of “whatever gets measured gets managed”. If you recompense the finance executive on his ability to appropriately manage the whole of the process rather than on the results of the finance department alone, this will start to remove any political bias that may exist.
On the other side of things is the issue we experience in the TV studio where the process owner is not adequately defined and this results in two people having differing idea related to a change. They end up with a compromise, and this is - by definition - less than optimal.
Photo Credit: Corvair Owner via Compfight cc
Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project Second Edition' is now available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you. Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.![]()
All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford
See related info below
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The Supply Chain in the Cloud
Many companies today are obviously interested in using enterprise technology that they can access via the cloud. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model avails companies, as is well known, of technology without a large fixed cost, and that is device independent, and accessible by more users, without continual upgrades to worry about. While there are the [...]
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HP Limits Student Labor in China Factories
The company has issued new guidelines for suppliers in China that use student interns.
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