Composite Software, one of our 2005 Well Connected Award winners, has not been resting on its laurels.

Composite recently introduced its Composite Application Views, which can communicate directly with Siebel and SAP APIs (PeopleSoft is expected to be supported later this year) and expose application data as standard relational views, which can then be easily manipulated in Composite's modeling tool and joined to other enterprise information sources.

While SAP and Siebel store application data in a relational database, the schemas are cryptic, which keeps the data locked away from BI and reporting tools and requires extensive knowledge of product specific APIs in order to integrate the data with custom applications.

By using those APIs and exposing the data as standard relational views, Composite has unlocked the data and gives developers the ability to integrate the data into other applications, including write-back capabilities.

This is a huge leap forward in the Enterprise Information Integration space, as it moves beyond the traditional inclusion of structured and unstructured data and into the application space.

The Composite Developer Zone provides a trial version of the Composite Information Server, so you can check it out yourself.

We weren't certain exactly where Compuware was going when it acquired our 2004 Portfolio Management Well Connected Award winner Changepoint, but after speaking to Compuware briefly last week we see the light.

Compuware announced Changepoint 10 this week and they've expanded the product to leverage other products in its portfolio such as its APM product, Vantage.

This gives Changepoint 10 visibility into the actual performance and availability of applications without requiring IT staff to manually enter such data for capacity planning and resource availability. The integration is proprietary, but still very cool, as it minimizes budgeting and resource scheduling SNAFUs due to estimates or old performance data.

Changepoint 10 also introduces configurable workflow capabilities to support the automation of key IT business processes and methodologies. IT can configure project and demand management workflow through Changepoint 10's Web-based, graphical design environment.

Sometimes change is good.

If your obsession with all things Star Wars has just enough room for one more frivolous but highly coveted purchase (the Jar-Jar Binks toilet brush just didn't satisfy your cravings), Alienware's about to make your midichlorians happy: the company will be releasing two Star Wars themed computers -- one for the light side of the force, and one for the dark. The PCs will come loaded with Star Wars movie soundtracks, wallpapers, and game demos.

But why stop there? Why not some other sci-fi inspired computers:

• Classic Star Trek PCs: made of cardboard with useless flashing lights.
• The Matrix PC: To start, Choose the red or blue button.
• The Day the Earth Stood Still PC: Clearly a Windows Machine

Tonight's podcast is about identity federation, and especially about IBM's latest announcements on the topic. Last week I had a chance to talk via phone with Joe Anthony of IBM, and he shared some of the thinkgs that he sees in the developing identity federation market. Now, I've seen enough people struggling with multiple computer-based identities to know that identity federation is coming, and ultimately coming in a big way. But I've also covered enough exploits and thefts to be more than a little apprehensive about pulling more and more identity value into data stores that we haven't learned how to--or been willing to--make truly secure from unauthorized access. If all the laws, regulations, and industry rules aren't enough to convince us to get serious about all forms of identity security, the knowledge that a single break-in could affect multiple corporations and a cascading universe of users should be the spur we need. Take a listen to the podcast and let me know what you think. Is your organization already implementing identity federation? I'd be very interested in hearing a real success story or two.

Whether you're a manufacturer, developer or enterprise manager of information technology, you already see the writing on the wall: Tech pros in China, India, Taiwan, South Korea and other Asian countries aren't just partners, but also potential competitors. Adjusting to this truly global economy is priority No. 1 for tech-oriented enterprises of every stripe.

Cisco CEO John Chambers counts 15 companies as his main competitors, so which one does he worry about the most? Not Alcatel or Avaya or Extreme or Foundry or Juniper or Nortel or Siemens or any of his other Magic Quadrant neighbors, but some still-to-be hatched competitor out of Asia. For Chambers, the high-tech legions being groomed in the East are just too overwhelming to ignore.

"You have a billion people in India, a billion people in China," Chambers noted in a recent interview with Network Computing. "They're going to put their top 10 percent into the universities. Twenty-five percent of those will be in the computer sciences, math, etc., so it's purely a matter of numbers." Likewise, enterprise IT pros will compete for jobs not so much with their neighbors at home but with well-educated individuals abroad, many of whom will still get their degrees in the United States but will head home to rising industries and standards of living.

As I've argued before, forecasts of the "Asian century" are premature. Remember that Japan was to replace the United States two decades ago as the center of technological innovation and industry, yet it's been held back by its rigid commercial climate. Technical education and government investment don't always translate into commercial superiority. A culture and regulatory climate that encourage entrepreneurial initiative and risk-taking are critical.

And of course, it's in the interests of executives like John Chambers to worry aloud about Asia. They want to force U.S. policy-makers into investing in their next-generation workforces at home. Otherwise, they will increasingly move their operations, including high-end R&D, abroad—or so is the implication.

But it's beyond naïve to think that the Asian threat will melt away, that we can flip the calendar back to 1990 with work-visa, domestic-content and other restrictions. No, we can't match China's and India's numbers. But we can leverage our own strengths, while preparing our people and companies to compete on a global playing field.

Here we are, a few days from the start of testing for the Storage Pipeline "Intelligent Switch" review.

Interestingly enough, after wending my way through the learning curve of intelligent switching - there is a LOT that you have to know beyond basic FC stuff - I feel I'm ready to begin testing, but do not yet have a feature chart or report card set in stone.

Now honestly, if I was a vendor, that would make me very afraid. But the fact is that I took a ton of vendor input to this process so that I could come up with testing that was fair and as unbiased as possible. I say unbiased as possible because your environment is not my testing environment, so there will be some differences in what we look for. My goal is to impart as much useful information about the market and the products as possible. This market is so new that it still has the "for sale" tag on it, meaning there's a lot of FUD and not much fact out there.

So my job on Monday is to set the report card and grading in stone. I have a call next Friday with a vendor that might make minor tweaks, but I really need to assure my vendors that before the first product goes on the line I know what I'm looking for. They want to know it's fair, and in today's IT publishing world I do not blame then for that one bit.

I still find it funny when I say this market is that new, don't you? Five years ago people were press releasing on this very topic, and yet I could only find seven vendors to invite, and only four of those felt their products were read and they fit into the space.

Anyway, watch this space as the next few months as we put these products through their paces. They all have different architectures and approach the problem in slightly different manners - signs of a good review, but also signs of a maturing space. That will make some interesting side conversation here in the blog.

If you have thoughts on when intelligence in the fabric is important to you, or want to chat about your experiences, don't hesitate to email me - click on the "your blog editor" picture, and my email is on that link - I'm definitely interested in hearing from you.

So what's our problem? In a nutshell, it's the way we store our identities. As the report notes, most U.S. consumers -- online and otherwise -- are identified through credit cards and records stored via credit bureaus. Criminals have an incentive to collect our identity information, because it gives them access to our credit and bank accounts. This is not the case in Western Europe and Japan, where identity data is stored via a third-party entity -- and where identity theft is almost unknown, according to the Aite Group.

Continue reading "We're No. 1 -- In Identity Theft"

Posted here at 12:24 PM in Business Strategy

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