Accounting with Office 2.0

Salesforce.com has demonstrated that Software as a Service can work, both technically and economically. As a result, multiple alternatives are currently being developed, notably Zoho CRM and Sunrise, the upcoming CRM application by 37signals. It’s great news, for a cheaper alternative to Salesforce.com would be welcome. Nevertheless, there is one business function other than CRM that is in need of an Office 2.0 solution: accounting. [Continue…]

Thingamy

My friend and fellow American V-Twin rider Jeff Nolan recently drew my attention to a bold start-up called Thingamy. Not much is known about the company — beyond what one of the founders is willing to blog about, but the overall concept sounds really interesting: implement a low-level transactional model that can reflect most business patterns and […]

Moving On

This article was authored by Bruce Silver
I’m starting to get the hang of this blogging thing, and have set up my own site BPMS Watch, focused on BPM technology, architecture, products, and industry trends. Please check it out, link to it, and subscribe to the feed. I’ve copied over a few threads from IT|Redux so the […]

Office 2.0 Directory

My little experiment with Office 2.0 received some nice coverage from Mark Hall at Computerworld yesterday. I am now using about twenty Office 2.0 applications on a daily basis, and I have reviewed more than sixty over the past three months. Time has come to build a proper directory for them. This will allow me to track features and bugs, while offering handy comparisons between applications. Last week-end, I did a review of Office 2.0 alternatives to Microsoft Access that could help me build such as thing. Here is what I came up with. [Continue…]

Why Eclipse

This is the third edition of our weekly BPM 2.0 post. Today, I will try to explain why Eclipse matters. My definition for BPM 2.0 states that a BPMS should be built around one single tool in Eclipse, and this radical statement deserves further explanation, as was illustrated by some of the discussions that followed the original post on BPM 2.0. [Continue…]

Three is Even Better

Last week, I said that two competitors make a market, which brings the following question: what about three? Well, three is even better, and this week was a good case in point, with the release of ajaxWrite and FormSpring. [Continue…]

Copy and Paste

Earlier this month, Ray Ozzie wrote a fascinating article on the need for some kind of universal clipboard that would enable copy and paste between Office 2.0 applications. Paul Boag and Anil Dash hosted interesting discussions on the subject, which helped me better appreciate the challenge raised by Mr. Ozzie. To make a long story […]

Real Time BPMS

A couple of weeks ago, I learned that a major telecommunications services provider took our Open Source BPEL engine and turned it into the first real time engine that could support the Quality of Service requirements that a telco carrier needs to use it as part of its core infrastructure. The modifications that were made […]

New LinkedIn User Interface

Somehow, the LinkedIn user interface has always been quite confusing to me. I could never quite explain why, and a lot of users had similar complains, without being able to provide much more insight either. The good folks at LinkedIn diligently acknowledged the problem and came up with a brand new user interface recently. They […]

Office 2.0 Alternative to Visio

The good folks at Solution Watch just provided a great review of Gliffy, which is the first Office 2.0 alternative to Microsoft Visio I know of. As I mentioned in a previous post, two is always better than one, therefore I’ll wait for a competitor to Gliffy to be released before creating a new category […]

Office 2.0 Storage

Every week that passes by seems to bring a new bug fix for Office 2.0. This one addresses the need for remote data storage. Amazon has released a new web service called Amazon S3 that provides unlimited storage priced at $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used and $0.20 per GB of data transferred. It comes […]

What is a Complete BPMS

This is the second edition of our weekly BPM 2.0 post. Today, I will try to clarify what a complete BPMS is. To me, a BPMS must support both process design and process execution, therefore a simple process modeling tool with process simulation capabilities does not qualify as a BPM 2.0 product. Also, a BPMS must support both web service orchestration and human workflow interactions. You can think of it as two sides of the same coin, one facing back-end IT systems, the other facing front-end human beings. As a result, and at bare minimum, a BPMS has three components: a process design tool, a process execution runtime, and a workflow user interface. [Continue…]

Office 2.0 Single Sign On

The lack for single sign-on (SSO) certainly is one of the most critical entries into the Office 2.0 bug tracker. A fix is currently being developed by a Vancouver-based company called Sxip Identity Corporation, which authored the eponymous Simple eXtensible Identity Protocol (SXIP). It currently works with Salesforce.com, and I would expect more online services […]

What is an Office 2.0 Operating System?

As you already know if you read this entry into the Office 2.0 bug tracker, I am not a big fan of Office 2.0 desktops. At the end of the day, I am a strong believer of best-of-breed approaches for building a good Office 2.0 setup. Different needs can be best served by different applications, and it will take some more time for integrated suites to emerge, much like it did for Office 1.0. Granted, an Office 2.0 Operating System would be nice, but recent attempts at developing such a thing are missing the marks in my humble opinion. [Continue…]

Is Oracle Discovering BPM?

This article was authored by Bruce Silver
Edwin Khodabakchian, the brains behind Oracle BPEL Process Manager, posts on a set of possible “BPEL enhancements” suggested to him by Oracle’s application groups — eBusiness Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel… They include:
1. Business Process Outline — “Enable business analysts to build the skeleton of a business process, skeleton which can be then implemented by […]

BPM 2.0 Training

Today, I am in London introducing Intalio’s seventh training session on BPM 2.0. We got eight paying participants, coming from four countries. We are using Intalio|BPMS 4.0 as supporting tool, and our training program offers in-depth introductions to BPMN and BPEL. Our next sessions will take place in Brussels, Belgium and Redwood City, CA, both […]

More on BEA-Fuego

This article was authored by Bruce Silver

In his new blog on ebizq, David Ogren of Fuego offers a spirited rebuttal to my charge (and that of others, like Sandy Kemsley) that, whatever its merits in filling out the BPMS magic quadrant checklist, acquiring Fuego was a strange way for BEA — one of BPEL’s initial sponsors — to go about it. While admitting that he (like the rest of the Fuego guys I’ve met) probably falls into the category of “BPEL-haters,” he says that the Fuego engine in fact executes BPEL in addition to its native XPDL-based language. My impression had been that FuegoBPM could import BPEL but immediately converted it for editing into Fuego-native, i.e., a one-way trip… once out of the tube that toothpaste was never going back in. But I could be wrong. [Continue…]

Bad User Interface

Silicon Valley Bank recently upgraded their web site, and with it came a new user interface that is a perfect example of what you should not do when developing for the web. [Continue…]

Who is a Process Analyst

It’s Monday and I am starting a new weekly series on BPM 2.0. Every Monday, I will pick one item in my BPM 2.0 checklist and provide more details about it. I will go through the items of the list in the order they appear in today, then circle back once I have covered all 18 items. Three passes should keep us busy for the rest of the year. [Continue…]

What is the UMPC Good For?

As an Office 2.0 addict, I have a vested interest in all things that can enable true user mobility, be they new form factors or wireless technologies that will keep me connected whenever and wherever I want to be. Problem is, coming up with new form factors for personal computers has proven more difficult than […]