Desktop computing is where the rubber hits the road, as far as information technology is concerned. The 30 centimetres between screen and eyeball dictates whether your expensive servers, networking kit, application licences and contracts will deliver the required performance.

For many individuals, personal computing is synonymous with desktop
computing, as PC clients, workstations or their thin-client equivalents deliver a standardised set of applications to a familiar user base.

Whether running SAP or a Microsoft Office front end, a computer is ­ in short ­ a computer. But there have been a number of advances in related areas, notably in terms of mobile devices and the web ­ and it is a reasonably safe bet that your organisation will make use of some combination of these technologies.

Desktop computers have never been the most reliable of beasts ­ we may only now see the blue screen of death on occasion, but we all recognise that it still lurks somewhere under the surface.

Mobile devices, such as PDAs, BlackBerrys and other handheld delights, might end up with the same internal combination of processing and memory as a desktop computer, but their provenance has resulted in some quite specific functions and uses.

Freeform Dynamics research suggests IT leaders believe the most relevant device for remote users is the mobile phone, followed by the laptop. The prominence of the laptop reveals that personal computers often provide the right combination of application functions in the most appropriate form factor.

Handheld devices continue to grow in power and their operating systems are following suit, with the result that a middle category of devices is emerging. Such devices are small enough to be considered portable, but just large enough to work with, as opposed to communicate with.

Ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs), such as the OQO Model e2 and the Samsung Q1, provide personal computing facilities.

Such devices, however, should not be seen as laptop replacements, but as a second device to be used when a laptop is unavailable. Ultra-large PDAs, such as the HTC Advantage, aim to fill a similar gap.

Other crucial developments are taking place on the web. Our research and anecdotal evidence suggests collaborative, internet-based tools are gradually being accepted into the mainstream.

The second strand of internet-based activity surrounds software as a service (SaaS), a model that encompasses just about every form of web-based application and that appears to be more hype than substance.

All but a few providers have succeeded in emulating Salesforce.com’s success. From the corporate standpoint, we see SaaS initiatives wallowing at the bottom of the heap of priorities ­ right down, in fact, with social networking and Web 2.0.

But there is every reason to believe that web-based applications will eventually be used in some combination with more traditional, desktop-based applications. And here, Microsoft does seem to have the right strategy, especially when the firm talks about “software plus services”.

However ­ and this is a big however ­ no technology leader is in any hurry to throw away the traditional desktop model in favour of a pure internet-based application suite.

Rather than just being constrained by technical factors, IT directors will need to maintain control ­ and whatever the state of existing systems and desktops, transferring control to the internet cloud seems too great a risk.

And we, therefore, doubt whether there will be any major transitions in desktop configurations any time soon ­ we believe changes will be incremental, rather than revolutionary.

Companies such as Citrix and Microsoft’s Softricity acquisition illustrate changes in terms of application streaming to the desktop. Such developments will allow users to download enterprise applications on demand.

The impact on software licensing costs could be huge and present a significant challenge to IT suppliers that are attempting to efficiently deliver applications, while preserving revenues. Not all vendors will succeed.

User interfaces present another area for potential change; should users consider voice recognition and immersive graphical environments such as Second Life? Once again, the answer lies in evolution, not revolution. While progress is slow, a number of companies, such as IBM, Cisco and BT, are investing in Second Life.

Any organisation that is about to decide on its IT strategy needs to consider potential business outcomes, rather than available technologies.

No article about the future of the desktop would be complete without a discussion of open source. While Linux can provide a viable desktop operating system, open source has so far failed to penetrate the corporate psyche in all but a couple of high-profile, public sector organisations.

A combination of a lack of interest from hardware manufacturers and poor support of mainstream applications has kept Linux in the domain of the hobbyist.

At the same time, Microsoft has not been idle. Developments such as Windows Mobile 6 highlight how the company has learned the lessons of trying to replicate a standard operating system suitable for handheld devices.

Microsoft’s advantage, which it has thus far failed to fully exploit, is the possible joined-up nature of its applications. However, full integration between Windows Mobile, Sharepoint, Exchange and Office has yet to reach the mainstream.

Other developments, particularly Google Apps, the Apple iPhone, mashups and cloud computing, could create significant changes in personal computing habits.

But from a strategy perspective, most individuals will continue to use corporate desktop facilities for the foreseeable future.

Jon Collins is service director at analyst Freeform Dynamics

Let's be clear about one thing, if the developing world wants to emulate the western world's way of life, we will need multiple planets to supply the raw materials and absorb the waste. EMC's Dick Sullivan points out that China has nine motor vehicles per thousand heads of population, India has eleven and the USA has 1148.

Huge changes need to take place and many of them are quite beyond the scope of the IT department. But, having said that, ICT generally can make a substantial difference and have a positive effect, not only on the planet, but on society and on company profitability.

In the last item in this series, we saw how changes in the data centre and at the desktop could make a substantial difference to energy consumption, space usage and the bottom line. Today we'll look at how ICT can support the organisation in its pursuit of environmental objectives.

Broadly speaking, ICT can help run a more efficient and less energy-consuming organisation. It can also help 'dematerialise' a company's products and the means by which it delivers its services. To take a simple example of dematerialisation, remember when we had telephone answering machines? Now the same function is delivered as a service, either by the telecom service provider or by software inside the organisation. More recent examples are online music and eBooks.

Another form of dematerialisation is to substitute travel with videoconferencing. We can transport people as bits instead of atoms. And save the economic and environmental costs of ground and air transport as well as accommodation expenses. EMC uses Cisco's TelePresence system and finds meetings very realistic. The worst aspect is that you can't all go down the pub together when the session's over.

Forrester Research suggests that, in future, the cost of a product or service will be measured not only in price, but also in terms of energy consumed over its lifecycle. No doubt a product's inherent recyclability and use of hazardous chemicals could also be taken into account. Such information would need to be recorded and maintained by IT systems. And it will apply to both the purchase, processing and supply activities of a company. All companies will need to account for their environmental performance.

IT can't act alone and its impact will vary in proportion to the type of organisation it is supporting. It must be difficult if you're the CIO of a coal-burning power station to know that 60 percent of the energy produced goes straight up the chimney. But we all have to do our bit and hope that others, with bigger carbon deficits are doing something about theirs.

The important thing is to look at the business as a whole, along with the CEO, facilities, HR and anyone else with a vested interest. Raw materials, manufacturing, logistics, staff travel and buildings are all part of the mix. IT applied intelligently can reduce road and air miles, reduce commutes and eliminate many business trips altogether. In America, UPS plans its routes to maximise the number of right turns. It estimates that this, and its package flow technology, saved it three million gallons of fuel last year.

Cutting the carbon footprint is a question of motivation at the top. Once a company has decided to act, every aspect of the business can be re-examined in this light. The trick, certainly in the early days, is to look for the big wins. These usually deliver nett economic, environmental and social benefits.

An IP communications network can put antennae in every part of a business. Instead of separate monitoring and control systems, they could be consolidated into a single all-embracing network, in theory at least. Building security, cctv, presence sensors, lighting, elevator control, air conditioning, fire alarms, remote sensing of reservoir water levels, railway points and so on could be integrated and automated. But common sense needs to be applied with regard to the investment needed and the payoff expected.

It's unlikely that anyone in the organisation will be familiar with all the potential opportunities. So why not create online meeting places where employees can discuss and share information and opinion? Especially in identifying opportunities for the beneficial application of ICT. The more ICT is seen as value-adding, the more it will attract budget and raise its importance to the organisation.

In order to keep the planet ticking over and to recover lost ground, we need to shift as many of our desires as possible away from material things and towards services. It all sounds terribly idealistic, but when you think that an iPod is probably thousands of times more environmentally friendly over its life than a conventional music system with its collection of records, CDs and tapes, then it's not such a big leap. We still get the pleasure we crave but with a much smaller environmental impact. The short term hit of retiring the old equipment and buying the new ought to lead to a long term nett benefit.

IT can help at many levels. Not least in environmental accounting for all the companies inputs, processing and outputs, in the effective operation of the buildings and services and in the minimisation of travel, accommodation and commuting.

But, it has to be said, if your company does not take any of this stuff seriously then your best bet is to show how environmental actions can actually benefit the bottom line. And take it from there.

I was asked again recently about the options for extending enterprise applications out into the field using mobile technology. It seems that more and more people are looking beyond mobile email to how they can use wireless access in relation to applications such as ERP, CRM, and so on.

One of the most commonly considered applications we see being mobilised is field service management, and the lessons learned in this area are relevant to many other applications. If you are interested in a proper treatment of the topic, I suggest you download this community research report.

For those who are interested in a more 101-level ‘which end is up’ introduction, here are a few notes I jotted down for the person who was enquiring about the topic yesterday.

The main options for wireless-extending existing applications are:

Bolt-on packages: Some application vendors provide these themselves and most have third-party options available as well. We can think of this type of solution as essentially a module that just extends the application, typically reusing a lot of the metadata, master data and transaction layer. This is good if your aim is mobilising a single packaged application such as SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft or whatever. The downside is that it can be a pain if you want data/functionality from multiple back-end systems to be surfaced together on the device.

Value-added services: Commonly referred to as the ‘VAS’ option in mobility circles. The basic idea is essentially the same as the bolt-on approach defined above, except that the solution is hosted (typically, but not necessarily, by the operator). As operators are mostly into repeatable solutions given their business model and mindset, the VAS approach is typically even more prescriptive than the bolt-on one, and is therefore generally targeted at simpler requirements. However, many applications extension requirements are actually quite simple so there is a place for this approach.

Open middleware platforms: This is where you procure a middleware platform that may be used to bridge the gap between back-end applications and mobile devices, with all of the clever stuff required to make this work properly. These platform solutions generally come with a development environment or allow you to use open tools such as Eclipse to design and build solutions. In reality, many of the solutions in this space are delivered with pre-defined templates or libraries for working with the most common back-end applications, but these are just a starting point for your own development efforts rather than a fully supported turnkey solution. The advantage of this approach is clearly that you have freedom to extend pretty much any application or mix of applications – including bespoke/custom/legacy applications, as well as packages.

The big imperative when getting into all this is understanding your requirement – particularly bearing in mind the medium term at least - think a little way beyond the immediate job at hand. I am personally not an advocate of big over-arching mobile strategies that cut across all types of application as the space is so fast moving and your requirements and what technology will be capable of looking forward are both difficult to predict. The concept of five-year mobility strategies is just nonsense as there are just too many variables that you cannot possibly tie down. There is also a strong argument that mobile access should be an element incorporated into other strategies for mobile working, process automation, collaboration, communication, and so on, rather than a strategy in its own right.

Something that’s critical, though, is getting a sensible policy framework in place, which will address things like security/compliance, integration standards, device selection/endorsement, operational management, and support. When doing this, it is important to think about what needs to integrated with the stuff that is already there and what you can legitimately ‘reinvent’ for mobile specifically without creating lots of disjoints and conflicts. You may have invested a lot of time on a security infrastructure, for example, and be reluctant to put a parallel policy management in place for the mobile domain.

The bottom line is that before you make a move in this space, it is worth taking time out to educate yourself, understand the options, understand your own requirements, then make choices on an objective and informed basis that will work for the immediately funded project and likely additional medium-term requirements.

As I said, this really is just a brief orientation, and my categorisations of solutions are just to give a flavour of what’s out there. Experts will tell you that not all VAS solutions are prescriptive and that bolt-on offerings often have development environments too that allow customisation and access to other applications, but people at least seem to appreciate having some basic classification framework in place as a starting point for gathering their thoughts.

As I said, a lot of this explored further based on actual feedback from practitioners in the Field Service Management report (and thanks to Momote for funding the underlying community research study upon which this is based).

By Dale Vile

A couple of us spent some time recently at BEA World in Barcelona.

There was an issue raised in the keynote speech and echoed in later sessions that I wanted to pick up specifically, as it is another example of a vendor spinning an issue to suit its messaging in a way that can easily mislead if taken at face value.

The spin

BEA has been repositioning itself in recent times from a deliverer of "big iron" infrastructure for building and running business-critical Java applications, to the custodian of infrastructure-enabled business agility and flexibility. Moves into portal technology, social computing and business process management through a combination of acquisitions and in house R&D have all been part of this, and the introduction of the word “liquid” into a lot of its branding has reinforced the positioning.

At this level, BEA is right on the money. Our research has indicated repeatedly that businesses often feel constrained by IT’s inability to respond quickly enough to changing demands – so no arguments there. However, BEA is taking this one step further and questioning the value of packaged applications to support this "new world" of adaptable, service-oriented and people/process-centric IT. The words are carefully crafted with phrases such as “the days of being able to innovate through packaged applications are over”, but there is a clear objective to sideline the relevance of packaged applications as we look to the future.

It’s another example of the line we hear from other vendors and, indeed, some analysts, which argues that service-oriented architecture (SOA) and increasing expectations around the need for IT flexibility spells the death of the application software package. Great though this is for generating headlines or (in the case of BEA) promoting the build side of the traditional build-versus-buy argument, there are a few other things we should probably consider before throwing out our ERP systems and other packages.

The reality

Let’s start with some very obvious stuff. If you examine the way any business works, you will find that the majority of its business processes are non-differentiating. What we mean by this is that while you need to be efficient and effective in these areas to manage costs and risks, you are unlikely to compete any more effectively in the market by inventing new ways of doing them.

Examples include the vast majority of the accounting and administration that takes place in the average business, and for most to whom they are relevant, things like inventory management, manufacturing planning and execution, human resource management, logistics, and so on are non-differentiating too.

Sure, there are exceptions such Dell that gains significant competitive advantage from the way it manages its supply chain, manufacturing and logistics activities, but if we look across industries as a whole, most business processes we see are of the non-differentiating kind, for which it makes sense to simply adopt industry best practice rather than reinventing the wheel for the sake of it.

So let’s be blunt – if you are not using packaged software for non-differentiating business processes then you are mad. Even if you could build a better general ledger or accounts receivable system than SAP or Oracle, you would not actually have gained anything through doing so in business terms. Of course, the chances are that whatever you came up with would not actually be as good as a package solution that has been tuned over the years in line with industry best practice and the requirements of thousands of customers, so the reality is that you would probably be worse off.

Having said this, BEA and others make the argument that traditional packaged applications are relatively closed and monolithic in nature, which is a problem when integrating them into the overall landscape, and when you need to change the processes they support. Even non-differentiating processes need to be modified from time to time for efficiency purposes or to accommodate changes in business structure, merger and acquisition activity, new regulatory requirements, and so on. The argument continues that all of those investments made in the 1990s to put ERP and other packages into place has inadvertently locked business processes in a way that is constraining by modern standards.

Let's put aside the configurability of most packages for a minute, and accept this argument for the purposes of discussion. The question then becomes, if you have an old monolithic package that is holding you back, what should you do about it?

It is at this point that the SOA extremists pipe up with the purist line about packages becoming irrelevant in the future as organisations compose their solutions to meet the exact needs of the business by selecting and plugging together the optimum mix of best of breed software components and services.

The problem is, that’s a bit like saying that because the majority of components that make up a PC are now standard and can be plugged together easily, there is no longer a need for pre-built machines. It is basically nonsense. Whether you are a business looking to buy or rent software functionality, a consumer looking for a PC, or someone in the market for a new car, you are likely to want a product that has been assembled, integration tested, and delivered as a working unit, with assurances that it can be maintained and supported as such.

The move to assembly from standards-based components and the surfacing of standards-based interfaces has benefits in all contexts, however, and in acknowledgement of this, pretty much all mainstream application package vendors are moving in the direction of SOA. Will they get there overnight? Certainly not, but both SAP and Oracle, for example, are investing huge sums on re-architecting their solutions, which is something the purists often fail to acknowledge or dismiss as just marketing.

The work is real, though, and the aim is to allow standards based ‘services’ to be exposed for easier integration and for selective substitution where it makes sense. Just like you buy an off-the-shelf PC and perhaps upgrade the graphics card, SOA will allow you take an ERP package, for example, and ‘upgrade’, say, one of the advanced planning components with a third-party alternative.

So, what we need are flexible packages rather than an abandonment of the package concept altogether.

Conclusion

The story we heard from BEA this week is a very strong one, though all of the pieces are not in place yet. When listening to the pitch around the need for more IT infrastructure flexibility that can support the ever increasing rapidity of business change, however, it is important to remember that there is still a lot of relatively routine and boring stuff that will remain best dealt with through prescriptive packaged solutions that encapsulate industry best practice.

Furthermore, off-the-shelf packages or services (if software as a service catches on) are increasingly going to be based on flexible architectures anyway, and the trend away from customisation to ‘soft configuration’ so packages may be tailored to specific needs without code-cutting is already well underway. The ERP and CRM packages of 2007, for example, are inherently more malleable than those of mid-1990s.

In this respect, I would probably on balance disagree with BEA that "software package-enabled business innovation" is dead, though I would agree that IT departments should probably be shifting their attention to using the latest infrastructure, tools, techniques and ideas of the kind BEA is promoting to support the differentiating elements of the business in as flexible and high impact a way as possible. And in some situations, it may not be sensible to even model processes at all, let alone lock them down in software.

The world and technology landscape is definitely changing, but let’s not assume that embracing new ideas always means abandoning the old – or that the traditional stuff is standing still.

I've just bought some more RAM for my laptop, a 2GB upgrade to be precise. Now, before I get into the ramifications (no pun intended), here's some context. I'm of the generation that recalls trying to fit software into the smallest possible of orifices, and while I never really got on with assembler myself, I could understand the elegance of a well-put-together piece of code. Some of my then-colleagues continue the embedded programming challenge, these days trying to fit large-screen video decoding into the RAM equivalent of a matchbox, and managing to squeeze in a copy of Space Invaders to boot.

And so it is - you know what's coming - that I find myself looking at my laptop screen and wondering exactly how Window Vista could manage to fill an entire gigabyte of memory, almost by itself.

Perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's worthy of a look. Right now, my wonderfully handy sidebar gadget is telling me that my computer is consuming 713MB of memory - which is on a fresh boot with only Notepad running so I can type this - Notepad takes up a megabyte, by the way. The other 712 is used up by processes that I have not invoked personally.

This is all a far cry from "640K ought to be enough for anybody," as Bill Gates is reputed to have said (and later denied, but where's the fun in that). Indeed, that wouldn't even support Notepad! But what exactly is the rest doing? A cursory glance at the task manager (5MB) tells me that, as a user, I am taking up:

- 25MB for Skype ("Take a deep breath," it tells me)
- 20MB for that “wonderfully handy” Windows Sidebar
- 10MB for Windows Explorer
- 8MB for Bluetooth
- 8MB for CSRSS - an RSS service perhaps
- 6MB for MSN Messenger
- 3MB for Samsung battery and display tools
- 3MB for Groove

Together with the nearly 10MB of various bits and bobs, that's 93MB by my reckoning. Meaning that the other 600MB plus, is taken up by non-user processes. I could strip out about 30MB for the AVG antivirus and shield I'm currently running, there’s probably some processes that are part of other apps I’ve installed but the rest does look like it is part of the core operating system (OS).

I would say "phew" but I'm mostly sanguine about this. My processing is down at three to five per cent as I type, meaning that whatever's being stored, it's not necessarily clogging up the system. There is the whole debate about poorly written, bloated OS code, which shouldn't be ignored but equally, I'm sure there are a number of things I could switch off and save a goodly percentage; also, I am using certain features that have an understandable overhead, such as the search indexer (26MB). Ultimately however, while RAM may be cheap, I do feel slightly frazzled that quite such a large quantity of it should be required just to keep the lights on, and I'm not absolutely sure why "tuning" should be seen as a geek pastime, and not a core capability.

What other options exist? Get a Mac of course, and I am seriously considering this, not just to satisfy my feelings that memory should be treated as a precious commodity but for a number of other reasons. Get Linux is another possibility, but that's usually back to the geeky-tweaky thing and it raises a whole bunch of compatibility issues. Get a life and stop worrying about it, is where my thinking is at currently, particularly now I have gone through the "get more RAM" option. All the same, I do find myself wondering, or indeed hoping, whether Microsoft is reaching the point where it will run out of things to add. The only thing I can think of round the corner is virtualisation, but I do believe that a well-written virtual layer should exist as part of the operating system anyway, in which case it could itself be part of the solution. Wishful thinking, perhaps?

In the meantime, should I bite the bullet and re-enable all those sexy Aero features? I think I'll leave it just a while before I do, as I want to enjoy the feeling of that glut of memory just a little bit longer. It'll be nice while it lasts.

By Jon Collins

I’m probably showing my age by recalling the classic Rowan Atkinson after dinner speech, which starts: “Where … are we going?” After a number of increasingly convoluted questions, he terminates with: “And have we got a map?” Given the fact he was playing a crusty old buffer it may be fair to say that the sketch was timeless; as, funnily enough, was the advice he was giving.

It will come as no surprise to those who know me to say that I’m not among the most organised of souls. In Belbin terms my preference tends more towards the creative plant than the completer-finisher – though truth be told, this could be as much down to the relative ease at which one can arrive, sprinkle a few ideas and depart quickly, before the hard work of actually achieving something really begins. When it comes to knuckling down, I’m no shirk – but let’s just say easily distracted. Like Rimmer in Red Dwarf, I have been known to put as much effort (if not more) into perfectly crafted, multicoloured revision timetables, as doing any actual revision.

Always on the look-out for labour-saving devices, it can come as some surprise when one of them actually works. And so it was that I stumbled across mind mapping a few years ago, my first, jackdaw-like tendency to seize the opportunity to draw some more pretty pictures overwhelming any thought that they might actually be of help. After a preliminary stab, it was only when I listened to a couple of tapes by Michael Gelb that I really grasped the potential – and discipline – of mind mapping. With his smooth American tones I have the feeling that Mr Gelb could probably explain the art of fish filleting to seals quite convincingly, but whatever. I was hooked.

When I first dabbled in mind mapping, there was no real software tool that cut the mustard – which was fine, I had my multicoloured pens. I did try out a couple of packages at the time: there was MindMan for Windows, which at the time was little more than a drawing tool; there were also packages that enabled outlining of ideas – not least Microsoft Word, but also BrainStorm from David Tebbutt and programs like BrainForest for Palm – a product that I found so useful, it could well have seen me relying on the Palm platform to this day. Unsurprising for a flighty mind like mine however, I have never stuck with any single product, preferring to try new capabilities as time passed.

Mind maps can be used for a whole variety of things, but where I have found them the most useful is in getting my own life organised. I have recently been playing with the latest version of Mind Manager, version 7 (which happens to be the successor to MindMan), and I am rediscovering the strength of the core concept – the mind map – as a highly scalable graphical device. If (perish the thought) I suddenly remember a bunch of things I am supposed to be doing, I can add them to a map with relative ease, and use this as the basis for prioritisation. The same principle has applied when I have used maps for structuring reports or defining problem solving approaches: the map is a very efficient way to grow a corpus of information.

In practical terms, right now I have a complete picture of everything I’m supposed to be doing. There are a couple of features of the new product that really help me with this – the first is a single key combination to add priorities to map elements, and the second is a very intuitive map filter. If I just want to see priority-one items I can do so, avoiding the more general clutter. It’s not perfect – it lacks the ability to review priorities in the light of what I should really be getting on with, rather than what I find most interesting – but it would take more than a software tool to enable that!

While I may be back on the hook, the question is – will I wriggle off again? The main weakness I have found with such products in the past is that they were great at visualising ideas, and outlining, but lacked capabilities when I wanted to grow them in new directions – such as moving from individual to even more complex maps, from personal to team organisation, or integrating better with the other tools I use to do my job. I understand these are the issues Mind Manager 7 is seeking to address, so the proof of the pudding will be how far I progress with the tool before I find it becoming a constraint.

To my mind, the “killer app” for mind mapping remains that it is a personal productivity device – I would advise against trying to roll it out (as a capability or as a tool) for anything broader, in the first instance. While I do believe that initially, individuals need to discover the potential of mind mapping for themselves, I can see the benefits of broader application, across the team or even the organisation – information can be presented in a map succinctly and readably even to the non-initiated, for example.  Will companies become suddenly more profitable as a result of mind mapping? I doubt it, but then, in this increasingly socially networked world we live in, perhaps mind mapping techniques could offer at least part of the answer.

It’s always fun to speculate about greater things, but for myself, right now, there is only one question. Will I stick with it? To be honest I don’t know – but for the time being, it is exactly what I need.

By Jon Collins

Throughout much of the last 15 years a lot of attention has been lavished on the less than humble personal computer, now almost universally revered as "the PC". While there is absolutely no doubt that the PC has enabled much productive, and valuable, work to be delivered it has not been without cost, especially in terms of the time spent configuring, repairing and maintaining such devices. However, in recent years the high cost of looking after the device has caught up with the PC.

A question many organisations are now asking, perhaps belatedly, concerns identifying the best way to deliver "desktop" service to users, and there are now many ways of answering the question. In addition to the standard 'unmanaged', usually Microsoft Windows-based PC, we have now entered an age where alternative solutions may be suitable for some users. Indeed, technology and business needs now ensure that alternative solutions are investigated.

The alternatives include using sophisticated management tools to assist daily PC administration and operations as well as potentially deploying rapidly maturing thin client-type solutions. In the not too distant future it is clear that newer offerings such as SaaS (software as a service) could have some role to play supplying basic desktop office functionality, but it is not there yet. It is also apparent that there will soon be obvious opportunities to bring well established virtualisation solutions to the desktop. The simplicity of deploying a single file containing a user’s desktop to whatever PC device is needed quickly and without fuss is certain to attract attention, especially in those organisations that are already comfortable operating virtual machines on their server platforms.

On the question of better management of desktop / laptop machines, this is something that Microsoft has emphasised as one of the major benefits of Windows Vista. With this in mind, it is informative to note the results of some research (yet to be published) that we have recently undertaken concerning the likely adoption of Vista among enterprises. In answer to the question “When do you think you are likely to roll out Windows Vista in your organisation?”, fewer than one in 10 of those that take an ad hoc or informal approach to monitoring the quality of service delivered by IT say they will roll out Vista within a year, versus greater than 40 per cent of those at the other extreme who monitor performance across the broad scope of IT service delivery.

This is, perhaps, indicative, that the challenges associated with desktop service delivery are now much more visible than in the past and that there is a growing recognition of the business value delivered by IT in general and the desktop in particular.

I will be writing more on the rapidly expanding range of methods becoming available to help organisations large and small deliver desktop services. In future articles I will consider the current state of affairs, the benefits, challenges and general fit of various approaches to desktop deployment.

Tony Lock

A long, long time ago, I can still remember… when, at university, we were taught about how computers were going to help people have all the information they needed, quite literally at the speed of electricity. Hum. It’s now 20 years later, and I don’t feel any more like information is at my beck and call than I did back then. Indeed it’s the other way around – I feel beholden to information, rather than feeling it is beholden to me.

I don’t think I’m alone. In fact, I know I’m not – a research study we conducted at the beginning of the year showed that information access remains an area of weakness for many organisations. Quite ironic really, given that we supposedly work in “information technology”, that is, the technology of information. Someone, and I suppose we all need to put our hands up for this, isn’t doing a very good job.

But is it an impossible goal? Think: if you could tap into whatever information you needed right now, what would it look like and how would you access it? It’s not an easy question to answer, and indeed, it is difficult if not impossible to do so without considering what facilities are already available to us. Every now and then I have a deep insight into my own information needs, for example when I am in a strange town, there’s nobody around and I really, really could do with a curry. Weren’t mobile software vendors telling us years ago that such a problem had already been solved? Perhaps it’s just me – everyone else is enjoying fine curries, laughing into their Cobras at having managed to keep the secret – but I doubt it.

It’s the same for business information. Whatever the reasons, many (if not all) organisations still struggle when it comes to pulling together whatever information is necessary for day to day activities. Again, there have been many promises over the years of how, say, we would be able to access a single view of the customer, or manage product information over the lifecycle. But, let’s face it, if it is still a challenge to organise meeting room bookings – and indeed, in many places it is – what chance do we stand in achieving more esoteric goals. Even this is a simplistic view of the real requirement, as anybody who invites a potential customer for a meeting, only to be turfed out of the room by some irate jobsworth, will know.

So what’s the answer? One thing is for sure - it cannot just be about technology. For an organisation to get on top of its information pile, it must be able to distinguish the important from the clutter – and manage the information accordingly. Long ago I went on a five-day information management course. What made it interesting was, four-and-a-half days were spent on how information should be managed, and in the last half day, the trainer announced: “And there are some technologies that can help people do it.” One day perhaps, when information technology has slowed down from its current pace of change, organisations may put an equal amount of focus on the problem, rather than leaping straight to the solution. Until then, we’ll just have to do the best we can.

By Jon Collins

Whenever a company buys another one that has a similar (perhaps previously competing) product line, there is always a fear that there will be tears within at least one of the customer bases when users are forced to migrate as the inevitable rationalisation takes place.

Worse than this is when the acquiring vendor says it will actually merge the two product lines, taking the best from each to provide a superior hybrid, which customers take as meaning that there is not even a chance of avoiding future cost and disruption, as everyone will need to migrate regardless of their starting point.

In such situations, there is also the added risk that the hybrid will end up looking less like the offspring of two thoroughbreds and more like the software equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster.

If you take such fears and multiply them a number of times, you get to the situation Oracle ended up with as a result of bringing together the PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel solutions with its existing Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), then declaring that everything would be pulled together into a single Fusion Applications product line.

Groans from the respective customer bases were almost audible at an industry level when this was originally announced, and many of the concerns and emotions still linger in many peoples’ minds, as captured in a Freeform Dynamics study conducted towards the end of last year.

After several iterations of often confused and sometimes conflicting messaging, Oracle eventually came up with a story, however, about how it would protect customers’ investments. This was known as known as Applications Unlimited within which, it pledged not only long term support for each existing product line, but continued commitment to enhance and keep them up-to-date.

The idea was to ensure that individual customer bases did not suffer from neglect of heritage applications as Oracle ploughed more resources into the super hybrid. Each product was endowed with a development roadmap to back this up and customers gave Oracle the benefit of the doubt. So far, the vendor appears to be keeping its word, with a pretty convincing set of upgrades recently launched for each product line.

Despite this, however, sceptics still ask whether it is economically viable for Oracle to maintain four major application product lines while developing a fifth one, which is a very legitimate question. Oracle’s reply is that the existing maintenance revenues coupled with the usual incremental spend that naturally occurs within any application customer base is exactly as it was before the acquisitions took place, which amounts to a lot money to fund ongoing enhancements.

It goes on to argue that all application vendors are in the process of re-architecting their software in line with trends towards ideas such as service oriented architecture (SOA), and that by redirecting the funds allocated to this investment from individual product lines to a central “pot”, it can finance platform related R&D that can be applied across both existing and new offerings. In this way, it can balance the books effectively.

Oracle’s reference to a major shift in architectures and platforms also brings one of the most common concerns expressed by the various user bases into focus, that as a result of the acquisition activity customers will be forced into major migrations they don’t really want. We have to keep this in perspective, however. PeopleSoft customers, for example, would at some point have had to go through this shift anyway if they were at all serious about keeping their infrastructures reasonably well up to date and taking advantage of modern emerging architectures.

Customers have been complaining about the rigidity of enterprise applications for years, not just SAP, but this can’t be fixed by vendors re-architecting alone – at some point the customer needs to take that transformation on board. So is Oracle really forcing customer’s hands?

The reality is that it is not, and in fact it is probably the complete opposite in that Oracle is likely to work especially hard to avoid “I told you so” come-back from sceptics by taking its eye off the ball with regard to heritage maintenance and enhancement. This would damage customer trust, which would have a knock on effect to its business general.

Meanwhile, the strategy of introducing increasingly more commonality across the individual product lines with each subsequent release under the Applications Unlimited programme is very sound. It means that when customers are ready to take the plunge on the big transformation, the disruption will be minimised.

Even then, conversations we have had with some of the senior execs within Oracle’s applications business suggests they fully understand the need for customers to take things steadily. One of the threads running through Applications Unlimited is a drive to get everything working together as much as possible across product lines through out-of-the-box integration.

Included in this is the new Fusion Applications line, so if a customer just wanted to migrate financials or HR, for example, and leave manufacturing planning where it is while they gain experience and confidence with the new architecture, Oracle will support them in doing that.

OK, so this is a bit of a simplification and in practice, with customisations and so on, there will always be development and integration work to be done, but again, this shouldn’t be any different to migrations that would have taken place anyway.

The bottom line is that when you consider Oracle’s Fusion Applications and Applications Unlimited strategies together, it all looks eminently sensible, and actually very empathetic to customer concerns and needs. Provided Oracle continues to work through plans with customers on a case by case basis, as it has been doing, it can hopefully keep everyone moving forward positively and gain or retain hearts and minds.

The only question then remaining is whether it can deliver on the promise of the ambitious Fusion Applications programme, but that’s a whole separate discussion.

Dale Vile

Are you looking to change your core email, calendar and contacts system in the near future?

Probably not. While there is a little movement in the market if you are a Microsoft Exchange site, the chances are you will remain so for a while to come, and it is the same for Lotus Notes/Domino shops and others. No one needs the disruption, cost and risk associated with switching something that’s so deeply embedded in the business.

But could you be convinced to switch email software brands if an alternative vendor offered you the absolute best set of collaboration and social software add-ons to take advantage of the latest ideas in team coordination, activity management, unified communications, blogs, wikis, etc?

The answer is still probably not, and you would be forgiven for asking why you should have to switch anyway to take advantage of such things. After all, there is no inherent reason why all of the aforementioned leading/bleeding-edge functionality should be a derivative of your email environment, even though much of it is about messaging and communication. In a world of open standards, you should be able to turn to any credible vendor for solutions in this area.

In theory, therefore, when IBM brings to market a comprehensive range of unified communications and social software solutions, it makes perfect sense for it to target Microsoft Exchange/Outlook users as well as its own Notes/Domino installed base, and this is exactly what it is doing.

There is, however, a bit of challenge here, stemming from the fact that the offerings are coming out of the Lotus group in IBM. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, giving the latest generation of solutions names such as “Lotus Connections” and “Lotus Sametime” does seem a little bit like IBM is shooting itself in the foot.    

The problem is that if you are a committed Microsoft Exchange shop, you are unlikely to spend more than about a nanosecond considering anything carrying the Lotus label, which conjures up notions of a big-iron corporate email environment with an old fashioned quirky interface that always seemed to be dragging behind in terms of the latest features and third-party solution support. To those in particular that may have used Notes and Domino in the deep dark past and moved on from them into the then “modern world”, Lotus is very much a legacy brand that is not naturally associated with up-beat forward looking ideas.

The reality is, of course, that IBM did indeed fumble the ball with regard to much of what it did in with the Lotus portfolio in the past. While the server components have always been generally superior to Microsoft alternatives, it was everything around them that left a lot to be desired. There was then the confusing and convoluted roadmaps and messaging arising from IBM’s attempts to simultaneously modernise the portfolio while trying not to spook the conservative Notes installed base by suggesting any lack of commitment to supporting their past investments.

Today, however, the vision, roadmap and solutions coming out of the Lotus group are very clear, crisp and potentially compelling to organisations across the board. The service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach that underpins the portfolio means offerings such as Lotus Sametime for unified communications and Lotus Connections for social computing are evolving in harmony with the Notes and Domino product lines but are not dependent on them. The upshot is that even if you are a Microsoft shop, it worth looking at what IBM has on offer if you are exploring options for implementing some of the latest ideas in communication and collaboration.

Whichever way you cut it, though, there is no getting away from the reality that IBM will lose out on some short-term opportunity outside its existing Notes installed base purely because it has chosen to brand everything as Lotus, as many will just ignore or dismiss the offerings as not applicable to them.

From vice=-president level discussions, we got to the bottom of why a fairly hard-nosed business entity like IBM is undermining at least part of its short-term revenue opportunity through this kind of branding decision. The message that came across loud and clear to us is that IBM sees the Lotus brand as a huge asset and is committed to fixing some of the perception problems associated with it outside of the loyal  followers. It is therefore willing to take the short-term hit on the basis that the brand will be refreshed and revitalised in the market as a whole if cutting-edge solutions in line with the latest industry trends are pushed out through it.

Of course this only works if the products themselves really are that good, but early indications are that the significant R&D investment IBM has made in the areas we have been discussing is leading to some very interesting, and in many ways, market-leading results. And with the obligatory focus on standards that pervades most of what IBM does nowadays and the commercial need to interoperate with current IT landscapes, openness and future proofing are almost a given.

On balance, we are optimistic that IBM can pull this off. It is not going to be easy – changing ingrained perceptions never is – but the timing is good from a market evolution perspective and IBM seems to be backing up its visions and plans with some serious substance.

Dale Vile

In the world of IT, we are constantly debating the latest trends and developments. Usually, although granted unsurprisingly, these deliberations revolve almost exclusively around the features of a particular technology, more often than not taking the form of “is technology / solution XYZ ready for adoption by mainstream customers or is it a bleeding-edge solution that is likely to appeal only those in desperate need of its features?” Too rarely it seems do things get turned around to consider whether “ordinary” customers are ready to exploit the solution. 

Consider for example the solution currently described by the acronym SaaS - software as a service. At its base SaaS consists of users sitting at a screen with essentially no special software running on their local device being able to access and run an application. Nothing new here as back in the mists of time this was the method by which all IT services were delivered. Over time things changed and for a period many systems were deployed using some variant on the client-server theme whereby the local access device had to have specialist software for each business application to be run.

This model has now begun to be replaced as it has been found wanting in the areas of cost and flexibility; it takes time and resources to keep distributed software up to date and today very many business applications now utilise the common-or-garden web browser as their front end leaving the bulk of the application code hosted on a server somewhere in the ever expanding "network”. Clearly today in most enterprises, large and small, it is the case that these central servers are located within the business, but given that IT departments are increasingly thinking in terms of service delivery, it is fair to ask whether any application using a web browser as its front end should be classified as being examples of SaaS?

A quick investigation shows that SaaS, both delivered from servers located inside and outside the enterprise, has now matured technically. Base connectivity, Wan optimisation, solution architecture maturity, application availability, web browser acceptance, the ability of servers to deliver sophisticated content to modern browsers using plug-ins, have all developed to a stage whereby their utilisation has almost become invisible.

However, as stated at the beginning of the article it is worthwhile spending a little time pondering the social and business issues that have developed alongside the maturation of SaaS-enabling technologies. The cost of delivering IT services has never been more visible whilst the pressure to reduce such costs has never been greater. A quick scan around any office or place of work (including the desk at home, kitchen table, internet café or WiFi hotspot) illustrates the fact that people, and thus in turn their business, want to access business applications wherever they happen to be located. Thus is born acceptance of SaaS as a delivery mechanism. In this respect, at least, it is more than apparent that the mainstream has already adopted the fundamental mechanics that underpin SaaS, but probably subconsciously given the wider definition of SaaS.

This therefore really only leaves the question of whether mainstream businesses, that is, everyone out there, is ready to utilise as part of their daily operations “archetypal” SaaS services, namely those provided by service providers outside the enterprise. The sophistication of solutions directly offered by suppliers of hosted email systems and application providers such as Salesforce.com, Oracle, SAP and a host of others has certainly reached a level whereby technically they are suitable for use by very many businesses.

One might still question whether the cost models are pitched at quite the right level, especially as most organisations may not be ready, willing or able, to eliminate or even significantly reduce their internal, frequently invisible, IT support costs.  Whilst use of external SaaS offerings is clearly growing rapidly, it is from a very small base. However with all of the major software providers apparently ready to back SaaS, it is certain that the numbers using SaaS will continue to increase. Indeed, the movement of the likes of Google and Yahoo to offer web desktop tools is likely to hasten user acceptance of SaaS.

By and large it is fair to say that users really do not care what model is used to give them access to their applications as long as it works when they want it. Business managers of course have other concerns but these should focus around levels and cost of service along, perhaps, with questions of security. They, like the users, should not have to concern themselves with questions of IT service delivery architecture. Perhaps the question of whether the Mainstream IS ready for SaaS should really now target the IT support community. SaaS may not be appropriate everywhere, but the solution delivery mechanism is not going to go away.

Thus far SaaS has had many of its greatest successes in smaller businesses where dedicated IT skills are notoriously rare, along with individual departments or functions in larger enterprises who make their own arrangements independently, often to overcome the perceived drag of central IT. Either way, SaaS has tended to be a business rather than IT-driven phenomenon. Like PCs when they first entered business use, SaaS is easy for individuals and groups to bring into the organisation without the blessing or even the knowledge of corporate IT. 

In terms of simplicity and usability the SaaS model for delivering IT services is here and it has been accepted by the mainstream user base. IT departments need to recognise this and work out, logically and transparently what place it holds today in their operations and where it will be utilised tomorrow, for services hosted inside the company and for those that can / should / should not be hosted outside it. The mainstream is more than ready for SaaS.

By Tony Lock

I recently joined a group of IT managers to dig into the issues they face in building their next-generation desktop architectures.

The format of the event was a roundtable discussion on key issues, sponsored by NEC and hosted by Computing. But once we started going round the table doing the introductions, it seemed that everyone was keen to unburden themselves of the pressing issues and trends that they see today, and it’s interesting to see how this small sample mirrors some of the output of Freeform Dynamics’ primary research.

One of the areas that we naturally covered was the migration to Microsoft Vista and the Office 2007 application suite. Opinions in the room matched the research that we carried out on Vista adoption in the first part of 2006, with only one out of the 10 IT managers present doing an active migration, the others preferring to wait some period of time until convinced of the stability of the new products. This latter course was expressed in a number of different ways, from the standard ‘not until Service Pack 2’ statement to a more measured response tied to the product lifecycle of the PCs.

One of the frustrations expressed was the feeling that everyone was being driven by Microsoft’s product release agenda, rather than being involved in a consultative process to take business capability forward on the new platforms. While we all like to be armchair marketing experts, there is an argument that says that Microsoft has been very keen on pushing the new technologies in Vista and Office 2007 and the degree of development effort involved in delivering them, encapsulated in the mass advertising around the campaign ‘The Wow starts now’, as opposed to communicating the undoubted business benefits that can be derived from adopting them. This is particularly true of new line of business applications developed using the latest version of Visual Studio that can access the new display capabilities in Vista, and the integration of products in the Office suite with collaboration services such as SharePoint.

SharePoint has achieved a viral level of success within organisations, much in the way that departmental Lans (local area networks) did in the 1980s, and this was again validated by a straw poll in the room, with some of the participants noting their surprise at how many SharePoint servers they were able to find on their networks when they went and looked. In a lot of cases these servers remained in place after the project they were set up to support had finished, which raises some interesting issues around management and administration.

Clearly SharePoint is delivering business value, but in many cases there is no corporate policy for management and use, so it’s probably a sound idea for IT and business to get together to develop a support and management model for better managed use of the technology. This would then make it easier to develop some of the Office 2007 collaboration features that would otherwise be underutilised. This additional value would also help motivate users to go through the pain barrier as far as learning the use of the new look-and-feel of the suite, such as the ribbon menu system.

Another area that a number of participants commented on was the pressure on IT coming from newer entrants to the workforce who have been accustomed to a rich online experience. It’s often frustrating for these younger people to move into to a computing environment that is missing the kind of collaborative experience that they have been used to. In many cases they understand the difference between work and social life, but they don’t understand why technologies such as online group chat, file sharing and free voice over IP are not available to facilitate their work.

This feeling is further strengthened when the employer claims a commitment to home working, in which case the remote worker is using a home machine on which they are used to using newer social tools. This contrasts with the challenge at the other end of the age and experience spectrum with more mature workers who lack IT confidence, feeling very nervous about setting up and doing self-maintenance on home networking.

There was also some discussion on the whole area of green computing. Much in the news with politicians tripping over themselves to burnish their ecological credentials, IT managers are dealing with more practical issues, like how to get all the heat out of dealing rooms that have three computers and five screens per desk, and getting power in and out of wiring closets that have to be upgraded to support the power over Ethernet (PoE) required to drive the latest generation of IP phones. Having worked for a thin client manufacturer in a former life, it was good to hear that this technology still has good mindshare in the enterprise, with many IT managers considering it for suitable environments such as call centres, hotdesks, and applications where data has to be kept away from local storage. Many of the drawbacks are now overcome, particularly in areas of graphics delivery, with newer techniques such as those from NEC allowing the delivery of streaming video without being hamstrung by the poor performance of the screen display protocol.

The main conclusion, which isn’t exactly a revelation, is that IT managers are clearly ready to embrace newer technologies, but on their own terms. Key criteria include achieving harmony with existing investments in software and systems, as well as timing of the product upgrade cycle. Vista and Office upgrades will be more palatable if they fit this model, as opposed to being force-fed as the only available software option on newer equipment. But the substantial discontinuity that this migration represents is giving some IT managers, particularly those in the public sector with an obligation to get the most utility from the public money they use, to look, however briefly, at alternative desktop technologies such as thin client, and even different software solutions such as Linux, OpenOffice and StarOffice.

David Perry