SuccessfulWorkplace

Real-time means something a little different to everyone. The term is too-often used to describe getting information on what happened up to the moment, a rolling report of the history of something – like customer purchases, staffing costs or inventory levels. It’s like asking what time it is. There’s only an accurate answer for that one-dimensional question at […]

That’s the answer to the question, “When do we need in-memory computing?” The question came up in a meeting with a technology industry analyst today and his answer was so simple, so direct, that it needed to be repeated. In-memory computing is the answer whenever scalability and performance are an issue. Those close to technology […]

We’re reached the moment where old information pathways won’t work anymore. Managing right here, right now requires a framework that we’ll get to in a moment. First some history. Growing up before the Internet, ‘right now’ technology showed up as the rare long distance call or watching live television coverage of an Apollo launch. Everything […]

Forrester’s John Rymer sums up his opinion succinctly when he says, “Big Data: The worst category name ever.” It certainly has challenges in name and how people conceive of it. Big Data as the hype would have it, I call, “The elephant riding the bicycle.” I’ll give you the seven things you need to consider, […]

I had the pleasure of seeing a presentation by The Nielsen Company (NLSN) as part of TIBCO’s sponsorship of the 2012 Gartner Symposium ITxpo in Orlando, Florida. Ken Rabolt, Chief Data Architect to the CTO of Nielsen presented on Nielsen’s move from independent IT systems spanning 110 countries to a consolidated market research platform that […]

I remember years ago watching Steven Seagal come back from a coma to kick Senate butt in Hard To Kill, and the particular scene where he scribbles an old proverb on the toilet seat that the anticipation of death is worse than death itself. Of course, it was a self-fulfilling prophesy, the evil senator is […]

We’re heading into Columbus Day Weekend in the U.S., giving us a great chance to look at the fundamental changes that technology is bringing to retail. The new game is event-based marketing. Big Sale! A quick look at the LA Times shows who’s in the old game. The pages are full of merchants using discounting as […]

TIBCO’s TUCON 2012 kicked off this morning with the theme, “Everything is Different.” From the start, the areas of Digital Customer Experience Management, Big Data, Social and Consumerization took center stage, beginning with the opening address by TIBCO CEO Vivek Ranadive. Vivek talked about how to make the worst of times into the best of […]

By now most people understand that data is growing exponentially in volume, velocity and variety. We’re awash in data and the first instinct is to store as much as possible for later evaluation. We store it simply because we can’t manage it in the moment it arrives. But in what has to be the biggest […]

When you think of railroads, do you think of high tech? Maybe you’re like many who think of trains as a quaint, lingering sign of a simpler time. The reality is that today’s railroads are a far cry from the business of even a few years ago. Technology and trains While their paths may be […]

We built our current business world on the premise that it takes a hierarchy of management to get work done. The idea stems from the assembly lines of the Industrial Revolution and is based on the fact that most people used to produce physical ‘stuff’. People, especially uneducated, unmotivated and bored people, needed to be […]

Observe, orient, decide, act. These are the four elements of the OODA Loop developed by a USAF pilot, Colonel John Boyd. Known as “Forty Second Boyd”, he had a standing bet as an instructor pilot that from a point of disadvantage, he could defeat any opposing pilot in forty seconds or less. He ultimately saved […]

The globalized, industrialized world is run mostly by Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. That’s been the case since the 70′s, when we first computerized accounting through mainframe and other monolithic, all-or-nothing applications. Dun & Bradstreet eventually dominated a marketplace where only the wealthiest companies could afford to play. The arrival of client-server applications in the […]

Retail has gone through enormous stresses in the past decade, with more to come. Just the normal ups and downs of local and global economies, supply chains and personal taste are a huge challenge. Add to that mix the increasing maturation of concepts like e-Commerce, Big Data, RFID and mobile. Each of these would be […]