Can SharePoint and IBM i coexist? The Magic 8-Ball says, “YES!”
Microsoft SharePoint has grown exponentially since its release in 2003. Did you know it took SharePoint only five years to surpass the $1 billion mark in annual sales? I believe SharePoint was gobbled up quickly by so many companies because it’s relatively inexpensive and easy to build a business case with a compelling return on investment.
That said, I find it odd that in the SMB market – a market that cherishes return on investment (and thus our love affair with the IBM i) – we find little mention of IBM i organizations embracing SharePoint. Microsoft has hit a proverbial homerun with SharePoint, yet it appears few of us on IBM i take advantage of it. If the Magic 8-Ball says SharePoint and IBM i can coexist, then what gives?
I think we need to allow the IBM i community to ask the Magic 8-Ball a few more follow-up questions to bring more clarity to this topic.
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The Rise of the Tech Savvy User (and the case for Business Process Integration – Part Two)
Oscar Wilde once said, “It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.” The year was 1894. If only he was alive today to witness a civilization now firmly addicted to data. Studies from UCSD (University of California San Diego) state that, in 2008, American households were bombarded with 3.6 zettabytes of information – that’s 3.6 trillion gigabytes, or the equivalent of 34 gigabytes per person per day. The biggest culprits were TV and video, followed by phone, music/iPod, social media and the internet, with written content amounting to less than 0.1%. However, there are marked changes in recent data consumption trends. The amount of reading people do has tripled since 1980 (due to internet searching) and, importantly, information consumption has migrated from passive to interactive.
Social media is now an integral part of our personal (and business) lives. 55.6 million American adults (about 32% of the US population) visit social media networks a least monthly – compared to 18% in 2008 and 15% in 2007. Americans already average over 5 hours per month on Facebook and 50 million tweets per day. Gartner predicts 1 billion Facebook users by year end with significant increases in traffic and unique visitors – European traffic alone grew last year by over 300% (999% in Spain, and 2,721% in Italy).
The Information Explosion (and the case for Business Process Integration)
"These vast size of data being generated, archived, managed and exchanged is driving the need for business process improvement and business process integration."
Rollin Ford, Wal-Mart’s CIO, earlier this year stated “Every day I wake up and ask….how can I flow data better, manage data better, analyze data better”. Not surprising when you consider that Wal-Mart processes over 1 million client business transactions every hour and manages databases over 170 times the size of the entire Library of Congress (the largest library in the world). However, Wal-Mart is not an isolated phenomenon. We are in an era that has been referred to as the “Industrial Revolution of Data”. The Economist calls it the “Data Deluge” and describes data as “the new raw material of business, on a par with capital and labor”.
In 2005 we created 150 billion gigabytes (or 150 exabytes) of data globally and this year (2010) a whopping 1,200 billion gigabytes (or 1,200 exabytes) of information is projected to be generated. Digital data is increasing at a compounded growth rate of 60% per year and this growth rate is expected to increase dramatically going forward. Google now manages 35,000 queries each second and processes more data in half a day than the US Postal Service is expected to manage and deliver all year (about 5 petabytes worth, or 5 million gigabytes). Corporate America is expected to archive 27 billion gigabytes (or 27 exabytes) of data this year alone.
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Redchester is the new capital of Switzerland
I may get berned at the steak by Swiss federalists for spouting hearsay, but I've heard some stories that I must share.
Those clever Swiss folks learned long ago that being neutral can have considerable political and economic benefits. Why choose sides when you can carve out a profitable niche in the middle?
This lesson can be equally well learned and applied to making IT decisions. I often find organisations defining themselves as an AS/400 or a .NET shop as though these are mutually exclusive identities. It's true that Rochester and Redmond are at almost opposite sides of the country, but their technology stacks can come together to form a happy place that I have christened Redchester.
Redchester - a happy place
Redchester is a place where teamwork produces better results than solo endeavor. In plain English, it's where the power of IBM's midrange systems meets the personal productivity benefits of Microsoft's product suite. In Redchester data flows freely but securely between systems so that each citizen always has the information they need where and when they need it.
The best news of all is that Redchester is not a fictional place, although, I confess, it is not the new capital of Switzerland. Recently I came across a couple of real-life customer stories that brought the benefits of unifying the IBM and Microsoft stacks into sharp focus for me. Continue reading “Redchester is the new capital of Switzerland” »