Chaordic Systems

Chaos <-----> Order and somewhere in between is Chaordic. A not quite out of control or in control system that provides enough support for people to get by.

To give a real world non IT example of this concept let me describe to you Kinshasa which is the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This is a place where you would say, coming from the west, “This place is in complete Chaos!” There seems to be no regulated transport, rubbish lays everywhere, people seem to go all over the place and there is to our ordered western thinking “no structure”.

However given a couple of days, if you are observant, you begin to see the order in the chaos. The Chaordic system which is to us broken, is to them workable. For example, three types of transport; Buses, forget them; Mini Vans, the real people movers,  full of soldered bullet holes with no glass windows and finally private cars (taxis), now there is travelling style, but watch for the potholes. Rubbish somehow does get collected and on the whole commerce and daily life seem to get by.

This description is rather like some corporate information systems that I have seen. Differing types of transport, which you soon learn the best to use, this repository that one, differing modes of getting there. Garbage collection of a type depending on the precinct that you live in, and currency in the information through finding a way and working out what is useful and what is not. Not the best but chaordic in nature. This type of system is out there and possibly closer to you than you think.

Open Text acquires Vignette

Dateline 6th May 2009. Open Text announce in an Open Text acquisition press release the acquisition of Vignette on of the leading WCM players for the old days.

“Vignette shareholders will receive US $8.00 in cash plus 0.1447 of an Open Text common share for every Vignette common share which equates to approximately US $12.70 at close of market on May 5, 2009. This represents a premium of approximately 74% above the 30 trading day average closing price of Vignette’s shares and approximately 41% above the most recent closing price. This values the transaction at approximately US $310 million.”

I had recently put up a post called where have all the vendors gone, dated the 17th April. At the end of this post I posed what will happen to Vignette, well we now know don’t we.

Open Text now eat the big V and the question is will they get indigestion over this dinner? Open Text have been on the acquisition trail over the last couple of years.

Given that 28% of Vignettes 2008 revenues were from new licences what have Open Text bought? A bunch of service contracts and the opportunity to convert customers?

However these are perilous times where customers will look to options. Good luck Open Text and goodbye Vignette, you were a leader once.

Oh my, ECM hug a tree

Well has ECM gone green or what.

Does this mean that I am not allowed to be an ECM "petrol head"? Does that mean that Open Source is better for the planet and that ECM Large suites are the information gas guzzling bad guys?

ECM - Are we heading for Green Information? Are we running out of trees?

Well from the all about paper web page it states that we have more trees in the US than there were 70 years ago, see here. 2.5 billion trees are planted every year and forest growth has exceeded harvest each year since 1940. Now does that mean that the US would get mega carbon credits ? Let's not go there.

But what about all the power that we are using with this online information. How is this power supplied, coal, water, nuclear ? Does this affect the green nature of my information?

Hmm, I guess I better print this out and think about it some more !

Oracle / Sun. Pass me another company, Burp !

20th April 2009, Oracle looks poised to acquire Sun Microsystems, pending Sun stockholder and other regulatory approvals, see Sun release here.

Wow pass me another company, burp ! The initial thoughts are that both companies will operate independently, yeah right !

Over time we will see the parent push culture and direction into the Sun camp. How will this all play out?

The acquisition gives Oracle a commanding position to battle up against the likes of IBM from the app to the bare metal, in theory a nice end to end story.

Acquiring the JAVA rights is a key software positioning that should not be underestimated as Oracle will strengthen its middleware play in in the marketplace. It also gives a strong Microsoft compete story in the application development space and office applications. But the question is how well the acquisition and the integration goes. Will the burp be passing gas or will a deeper organisational indigestion set in. I have not crystal ball, so let’s see how this pans out.

 

Going live with Windows Live Writer

The previous blog entry “Where have all the vendors gone” was produced and published using Microsoft Live Writer. I must say the whole process was a delight. I was using the 2009 version of the Live Writer product.

Shown above is a direct ALT-PrtScrn and Paste into the blog entry from the Help | About Windows Live Writer menu. This is not mind blowing, I agree, but it really effective and gets across the ease of use that I have found with the product.

The hyperlink at the top of this post was placed there one click, select previous post option,  fast and painless.

This version is light years ahead of the previous versions of live writer that I have used, where I have struggled to get the content and images in the right place for the template that I was using. But now I have been able to download the template, so that I get a preview of the actual layout of the blog entry, even before I go near the web, fantastic.

Setup was easy and getting the templates was as simple as pointing to the blog and enter my logon details. Then I was asked if I wanted the theme downloaded and away we went, simple and easy are the words that spring to mind. I will be giving the writer a bit more of a squeeze in the coming weeks.

If you are interested to get a look at the software go Live Writer