Friday, December 27, 2002

XML WEB SERVICES FOR VB DEVELOPERS: I work with Paresh Suthar at Groove Networks. I really enjoy working with Paresh for a number of reasons, but a primary reason is he never subjects me to jokes about Visual Basic being a "real" language. I am a huge fan of VB, and I really understand the pain my friends with Apple Macintosh's go through when they first admit the fact. Visual Basic, like Macs, gets the job done. At least the types of jobs I need the tool to do. So, when I needed a pointer to a good book that would get me started on leveraging web services in the context of a VB VS.NET project I was embarking upon, I went to Paresh. He pointed me to a book called "Real World XML Web Services" by Yasser Shohoud. Of the 13 chapters in the book, 12 are highly technical and build upon the previous. The XSD Type System, SOAP, WSDL, .NET, and UDDI are covered in rich detail, complete with code samples (and the requisite CD-ROM with source). Chapter One covers the business value propositions. His position on interoperability and the heterogeneity of enterprise computing platforms makes the case for a common messaging language based on XML. As one who really believes in distributed applications as the only way a business optimizes their investment in people, his comments on robust user interfaces is more appealing. He makes the observation that many organizations have made the shift to browser-based clients for enterprise apps, and it's not because the browser offers a richer user experience. It doesn't. It's largely a fiscal issue of deploying apps to the desktop with a large percentage of the cost attributed to communications to enterprise applications. But this notion of "browser interface because it is cheaper" is faulty logic if the core tenet of the organization is to optimize worker productivity. The result of this logic is "an application that is easy to deploy, but difficult to develop, and severely limited in its user interface. Which means you spend more time and money developing what is, from a user's standpoint, a less-functional application". 10:22:29 PM

INNOVATORS DILEMMA: The Christmas holidays are great for a whole bunch of reasons, but the one I enjoy immensely is the chance to get away from the minutiae of the day job and think more broadly. Larry Bossidy (Chairman of Honeywell International) and Ram Charan's new book "Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done" was on my hit list of things to read. I've made it to page 157 and a couple of ideas have stuck out so far. First, it's refreshing to see the authors equate "Leadership" to something more than dreaming up new ideas or basic big thinking. Conventional wisdom in many places has it that leaders don't get their hands dirty, and those that do are lowering themselves to the level of "managers" or worse, subjugating oneself to the tactical side of the business. It's execution, in addition to conceiving and planning, that is the core value which propels certain leaders and their companies to the heavens. The authors write that, "execution is the systemic way of exposing reality and acting on it", which means getting into the trenches up (suppliers) and down (through customers) the value chain to see what is working and what is not. The authors contend that the real leader is the one that focuses on three core competencies: picking other leaders; setting strategy; and conducting operations. I really like to use stories when a point is to be made, which leads me to my second observation. The book talks of "Innovators dilemma", a term I had never really come across, but it makes a whole lot of sense. The authors set the stage early in the book about alignment of the previously mentioned core competencies by citing the errant ways of Lucent Technologies. Lucent had a bunch of really bright people, but didn't pay attention to the strategy part especially as it related to operations. After being spun off, Lucent experienced 24 months of unprecedented revenues because of a marketplace that was making heavy capital investments. Where this happy story seems to unravel is in the fact that Lucent's customer base was largely made up of telcos buying analog gear. Their business was largely based upon unsustainable growth prospects given the direction in which the market was headed. Furthermore, the hottest demand was for products that they didn't have: routers and high-capacity fiber switches. Couple this with the Bell Labs' notorious snails pace of getting new products to market, and the train wreck begins to unfold. What really makes the story fascinating is the primary point of why the authors contend that Lucent missed the boat: They listened to their biggest customers. The myopics of listening solely to a customer base that was firmly rooted in analog, while ignoring a market that was moving towards digital, makes the point. The "dilemma" being companies with the greatest strengths in mature technologies tend to be least successful in mastering new ones. This is as much an operational issue as it is a strategic issue: market intelligence misaligned with sales intelligence with neither being weighed appropriately in the strategic mix. 9:34:44 PM