Thinkovation

I’ve been worrying all week-end about “Green Avatar Syndrome”, the state of activism and the relevance of twitter.

This going to be a longish post, so here’s the abstract:

• I’ve no objection if you want to turn your avatar green..
• Turning your avatar green absolutely does NOT make you an activist
• There are simple things you can do to offer meaningful support to the people of Iran
• There is enormous value in Twitter as a means for sharing ideas, but those ideas only have real value when they break out of twitter into the real world
• You need to be careful about the value of twitter as a source of news and an channel for change
• What have you done Mr Holier than thou??

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A beautiful bit of code.

Really just popping this up so that I remember the location of this SUPERB bit of JavaScript.

Here’s the code

IBM has announced its intention to acquire a SaaS email and calendaring provider called Outblaze. The announcement is here.

This is an important announcement for two quick reasons - firstly the outblaze technology can bring added functionality to IBM’s Bluehouse platform, and secondly it signifies that IBM is pretty committed to investing in its  “big play” in the online collaboration space.

I reckon 2009 and 2010 are going to be busy years in terms of acquisitions - Steve Mills (the chap who runs IBM’s software business) has a track record of smart purchases, and while I don’t expect him to go crazy with the corporate credit card, I reckon there’ll be a few bargains that he just won’t be able to pass up in the coming two years.

I’m expecting to hear lots and lots on Bluehouse from IBM at the upcoming Lotusphere 2009. It’s very much something to watch…

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Just done a rather belated upgrade to WP. Now on 2.7 and it’s got the purdiest UI! Very pleased.

The pic on the left is Jeronimo’s monastery in Lisbon.

I’ve enjoyed this past week’s chatter about the current state of SOA, while much of the discussion has been a combination of punditry and publicity seeking with relatively little actual content inserted in order to justify the different propositions, there have been a couple of fab posts – notably from a set of analysts I particularly like and admire – Bloor, Governor and Ward-Dutton (in alpha order).
So I thought I’d add my two pennorth.

Essentially - this is what I have to say -

• Saying “SOA is Dead” is as meaningful as saying “Art is dead”
• It is either misleading or foolish (or both) to state that SOA is dead
• Giving up on architecture just because it’s a “chore” is the road to failure…
• If SOA is dead, then Web 2.0 is dead
• The good news, though, is that SOA is as fit as a fiddle
• The bad news is that if you want to succeed, you have to be willing to make an effort
• We have a simple choice: get it right, or do it all over again

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Richard Holway posted this morning about Kashflow (a small but growing UK-based software company that offers accounting software via software as a service).

In Richard’s post he mentions that it seems that Michael Jackson (former Chairman of Sage) had made an offer for the Kashflow business of £1m, which was rejected by Kashflow’s founder Duane Jackson.

According to Richard, Jackson made the offer with a view to using the Kashflow product to act as the “heart” of a new SaaS venture he was planning.

Well done Duane for saying no to the £1m for 100%… If I were him I wouldn’t give the company up at this point in time, but I’d be very keen to find a way to sell Michael Jackson some kind of stake since he’d made a very city-friendly supporter and has a wealth of experience that money cannot buy.

I’m only posting this, because it reminded me of a conversation I’ve had several times with Holway - I’ve always been critical of what I perceive to be a deep lack of innovation at Sage, and have given Richard a hard time in the past over his positive opinion of the company. Richard only needs to point to the company’s long-term financial performance to justify his view of course, but I believe that Sage will be dead in 5 years unless it can develop a completely new platform around SaaS - which is something you don’t do by buying lots of companies and cobbling them together.

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Facebook fatigue…

So… having built a pretty dandy benchmarking engine, how do we make it easy for other people to consume it? Blathering away over a triple-grande-caramel-machiato-with-enough-extra-caramel-to-kill-a-dog, I happened to mention to Jonathan, that we could create a google gadget interface to the application… Naturally, this statement ended with “How hard could that be?”

Well, I’m in the process of finding out…

As it happens, I’m off to a great start - Thanks to this - an utterly superb intro to gadget writing.

If you’re at all gadget curious, I’d recommend the seoish tutorial… it rocks.

Katy Ring has joined us at Bathwick.

On a personal note, I can’t tell you how delighted and excited I am. Katy is an amazing person to work with - and I’m over the moon.

Here’s the press release:

Bathwick Group Press Release:

For Immediate Release

5.6.2008

Dr. Katy Ring joins The Bathwick Group

Dr. Katy Ring has joined the Bathwick Group as a Principal analyst in the IT Services field. Highly regarded internationally as an analyst with insightful and challenging views on the development of the IT services market, Dr Ring will be responsible primarily for developing Bathwick’s new Global IT Services research programme, due for launch in Q4 2008.
Jonathan Steel, CEO at The Bathwick Group, said “I am delighted to welcome someone of Katy’s calibre to Bathwick; her experience and ability adds a sharp edge to Bathwick’s IT Services research and consulting business.”
Latterly with NelsonHall, Dr. Ring spent 12 years at Ovum leading research into the opportunities for emerging software and services markets as well as developing the company’s Outsourcing Practice. Prior to her tenure as a Principal analyst and Practice Leader at Ovum, Katy was a journalist with publications such as Computer Weekly and Computergram, and was founding editor of Software Futures.
Commenting on her appointment at Bathwick, Dr Ring said, “It is refreshing to join a research organization committed to developing research that is both commercially relevant and intellectually engaging. The Bathwick Group has the operational agility, professionalism and cultural audacity to enable its researchers to think differently. I am very excited by the opportunity to build a Global IT Services programme here.”

Dr Ring holds two degrees: an Honours degree in politics, philosophy and history from the London School of Economics and a PhD in the popularisation of science from the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Last week, we ran a two day conference on Green IT, to take a look at the agenda look here

A great mix of attendees and speakers - including a number of analysts from other firms, Rakesh Kumar and Nino Moscardini from Gartner, Martin Hingley from IDC and Andy Lawrence from the 451. This has prompted a couple of questions from attendees - “Why allow other analysts to muscle in on your action?”. The simple answer to this is, because they’re smart, they’ve got something valuable and important to say, and the Bathwick group is absolutely committed to working and collaborating with other smart analysts. It doesn’t need to be “formal”, it doesn’t need to be an “alliance” - Let’s get on and do stuff.

And Reuters ran a piece on the event -> here