Software Soapbox

Great Geek Story!

Anyone who has ever been on a pressure cooker development project will enjoy reading this....

….During the run-up to their launch, the schedule slipped significantly, and the CEO (overall a great guy) made the classic engineering management mistake of adding many more developers to the late project in hopes of speeding its completion.

......After failing to win several arguments on this point, the engineers … each bought a copy of The Mythical Man-Month, brought the CEO into a conference room, and stacked up the copies of the book, telling him, It is extremely urgent that you read this book. We’ve bought you many copies so that you might read it faster. They made their point.

Microsoft Office 12 Will Support PDFs

via InformationWeek

Users will be able to save documents in PDF form by using the "Save As" command from within Office applications, said Sinofsky. "Instead of printing the document and faxing it, or overnight-mailing it, customers can save a PDF and electronically distribute a read-only, 'as-printed' representation of the document," he added in a statement.

Most of the applications that will be included in Office 12, as well as stand-alone programs which are part of Microsoft Office, will have the new capability, said Sinofsky, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, InfoPath, Visio, Publisher, and OneNote.

Salesforce.com introduces eBay-like software exchange

via Yahoo

Salesforce is seeking to tap the creativity of thousands of customers to transform Salesforce software into a broad-based "platform" that companies can build on, much like Microsoft Corp.'s Windows program.

Microsoft unveils new brand of business software

via Yahoo

Over the next year, Microsoft said it will launch new versions of business software products under the "Dynamics" brand. For example, the next version of Microsoft's customer relationship management (CRM) program will be sold as Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Microsoft also unveiled a separate product code-named "Centro" on Wednesday, server software that will allow mid-sized businesses to set up, manage and maintain corporate networks.

Why Promote From Outside When The Talent Is Inside?

via Yahoo

Some companies are turning to software tools to help improve, automate, and formalize their succession-planning processes. Succession-planning software can help companies map out their talent needs, especially as they contemplate strategies for adapting to changing market conditions and competition, and also anticipate shortages in talent as retirement-age baby boomers begin to leave the workplace.

Is Open Source a Business?

There is an interesting discussion over at Ed Brill's Site about the long-term commercial viability of Open Source.  I agree with Ed on this one....

Many open source geeks start out with the best of intentions.  After a while, the excitement wears off and they realize that they're not getting the recognition or the money that they expected.  When this happens, they try to find a way to make money from what has been essentially free, up to that point.  The lucky few get money from good jobs or a big company buys them out (or both), but those are the lottery winners who beat the odds.  The rest learn 2 valuable lessons:

1)    Peer popularity <> marketability
2)    If you want to make money you need to be in business, and a successful business needs paying customers.

And it's not just me.  Mike Griffin summed this up well a few months ago when talking about FireFox programmers:

"Finally, and much to your surprise, the project doesn't really turn out to be the big career booster you thought it was going to be. In fact, perspective employers are hesitant to hire you when they find out you have a mistress on the side pulling at your time and resources.”

Microsoft works with BI vendor to embed analytics in SQL 2005

via Yahoo

Working with the SQL Server team, the SPSS solution, Statistical Services for Microsoft SQL Server 2005, will integrate into SQLs DSV (Data Source View), the analytical services component of SQL Server 2005.

SOA drives compliance, open services opportunities

via Yahoo

"The fact that we have SOA architecture and [an] XML-based flow where an auditor can point at [specific] steps in the process makes [compliance efforts] easier," Culbert said.

Trickle-down BI

via Yahoo

The trickling down of BI is reflected in several terms. Noted expert Keith Gile, principal analyst at Forrester Research, calls it operational BI: analytic functionality built into the procedural interface of an enterprise application -- the screens and applications used by sales personnel, for example -- that makes or recommends decisions for end-users, thereby shrinking operational response time to minutes or seconds.

IBM delivers product management software

via InfoWorld

Citing examples of the advantages derived from the integration, a company spokesman said retailers can better enable their suppliers to manage new and changing information about their own products faster, and as often as they need to without any manual intervention. Manufacturers, for instance, can make detailed information about their products available to employees for training purposes as well as being able to provide better customer service, the spokesman said.