Monthly Archive

I’m just back from Rome, where I did some work for Getronics, and spoke with the great CIO’s of Chevron (Lynn Chou), Booz-Allen-Hamilton (Frank Smith), and DSM (Jo van den Hanenberg).

I spoke about the 3 laws of IT (see http://www.qhuba.com for more info), and sat in on a days’ workshop.

As it was in Rome, I took the opportunity of spending an extra day there with my wife, and we took in the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of Rome. Really enjoyable stay.

It’s a little worrying from other aspects though. It made me think. Again.

In the light falling through the circular hole in the top of the pantheon, I came to a realisation. We’re fixing the wrong problem. The fact that it’s a problem is part of the reason we’re trying to fix it.

Here, let me try the thought-train on you:

We always go to look for the biggest or most expensive problem we can find, and then try to solve it, to see what problems we as IT vendors (or CIO’s) can do for our customers.

Shouldn’t we be spending more time on areas where there are no problems?

Think about it. we go through our lives for 90% of the time with little or no problems.

And still, we’re trying to optimise the last 10%? That just doesn’t make sense. Isn’t it time to stop and take a really good look at the 90% that isn’t obviously causing a problem, and see what we can do there?

Like fashion, food, good music; there’s plenty out there, but time and again we’re made happy by the fact that there’s more where it came from. We buy better mobile phones even though we can’t articulate what’s wrong with our old ones.

So here’s the challenge: Now go out and fix what’s not broken. We might just land up surprising ourselves and our customers.

Pauwl Lunow

Let’s face it, the Germans determine pretty much which car you drive if you have lots of money.

After all, Bugatti and Lamborghini have gone north to Germany from an ownership perspective, to join BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi.

And now they’re determining your Browser, next your OS?

It’s true, it’s not Microsoft anymore that determines whats on your company desktop, it’s SAP.

If you run Firefox, try to read the SAP annual report here.
If you’re thinking of running Linux, first ask yourself if you want to be bound to a browser-client or not.

Now I know the browser client has gotten a lot better (fully functional?) in the last years, but are companies OK with leaving the client fully behind?

So what’s the deal? Is SAP in bed with Microsoft now? Why isn’t there a SAP client for Linux, or a roadmap for it? Or have I overlooked some information somewhere?

With the impending release of Ubuntu Linux for other devices (see here) it’s clear a fully functional, viable alternative for tablets, and mobile devices is coming.
But then back to SAP. It seems we’re being locked-in to Windows platforms by SAP.

Time to get on the barricades and see if we can free our corporate ERP’s from the platform restrictions, and really set our users free!

ACTION: Go and find out from your SAP representative what they’re doing about getting SAP going on Ubuntu Linux.

Go now.