netzooid

Michael Connor commented on my last post

With respect to integration, it’s one of the biggest challeges today. It reminds me of high school sex, everyone’s talking about it but few people are really doing it.

Combine that with this excert from Phil on Loosely Coupled

Microsoft has learnt a lot from its multi-billion dollar acquisitions of business software vendors Great Plains and Navision, but it’s probably ready to write off that off to experience now. For Microsoft Business Solutions has signally failed to progress the componentization of its products under an oft-deferred plan codenamed Project Green. What I believe Microsoft has learned is that established business applications vendors are congenitally incapable of doing what’s necessary to adapt their applications to the requirements of standards-based services architectures. This valuable lesson has encouraged the vendor to concentrate on making sure that it protects its server products, while making sure that Windows and Office become the ‘smart client’ beneficiaries of the collapse not just of MBS but of every major business application vendor’s market share.

The market is really ripe for integration. I think Microsoft saw this. In logistics at least costs are going through the roof but providers are doing little or nothing to increase their efficiencies.

I think Phil’s analysis about MS Office is dead on. Thats basically what I’m doing next week is writing an MS Office plugin for our software. Documents and custom data come in from Word and Access. Thanks to Microsoft’s really superb effort as of late with respect to integration I anticipate I can do this very quickly.

From Java, GIS, & Logistics:

Let’s Put Data on Tags! I think this is the worst idea imaginable, especially when it’s considered an answer to integration…just imagine an Intermec tag with only 108 bytes and a bunch of companies fighting over what data should be on the tag and what the format will be. A tag should simply contain an ID. A VAN or proprietary system can then enable organizations to attach data to that tag. Permissions and security can then protect that data and control visibility. The only reason to ever put data on tags is when they won’t need to be read by other companies and you don’t have access to the net (think military). Also, there are already people out there hacking data on tags and that even furthers my argument.

Amen to that. RFID tags should only contain an ID. The underlying system should manage the data associated with the tag. It highlights the bigger problem in the logistics – the failure to interconnect vendor’s supply chain systems and leverage their data. Which highlights the even bigger issuess a) a lot of logistics software is just plain awful and b) a lot of logistics executives are ignorant of how to use technology to create reductions in cost.

After being courted for the bazillionth time to sell Quixtar/Amway today (this time in the mall), I swear I’m signing up just so these people get off my back. The person told me he was “in to marketing” and wondered if I was “keeping my options open for the future.” Once you sign up under a person you really can’t switch so it becomes a non-issue (I think).