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Wednesday’s Whispers: People Whispers – June 2009

R "Ray" Wang — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:59:01 +0000

PEOPLE WHISPERS: MOVES, PROMOTIONS, AND MILESTONES*

Starting this month, we’ll be splitting the trends in Corporate Whispers from the People Whispers series. Catch the latest monthly random thoughts, trend points, and corporate trends here. For the latest on career moves, promotions, and milestones, stay tuned here.

Congratulations to all! Thanks for your emails and alerts. If you’ve got a change or know of a promotion, keep dropping me a line! If you need a referral, don’t hesitate to reach out to me via Linked In.

Jean-Sebastien Bardet became Application Portfolio Manager at Orange Business Services in March 2009. He is responsible for the Management of Portal and Business Intelligence domains within the health business unit of Orange Business Services – Almerys. Jean-Sebastien formerly was an advanced technology architect at Michelin and has served consulting roles at Steria, Sylis Group, and Cambridge Technology Partners.

Brian Benedict became Business Development Director at Aite Group in January 2009. Brian was a Star sales professional at Forrester Research and joins former Forrester Research alumni such as Ron Shevlin. Previous experiences include serving as the Board Member at AIIM International, Board of Directors at ARMA International, and Business Development Lead at InfoCurrent.

David Benson leaves his Global CIO position at News Corporation to serve as the Chief Information Officer at Progress Software reporting to President and Chief Executive Officer Rick Reidy. David brings more than 25 years of business and IT experience to Progress and has held multiple CIO positions at GE where he led significant organizational and process change.

Aneesh Chopra was confirmed as the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer on May 21st by unanimous consent.. Chopra will also serve as the Associate Director for the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. Aneesh previously served as the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Secretary of Technology.

Sally Cohen leaves Forrester Research where she last served as an analyst for Environmentally & Socially Responsible Consumer Product Strategy at Forrester Research. Her new roles will be a User Experience Researcher at AnswerLab.

Brian Carpizo joins as CEO of Eventric. Brian formerly led Junction Solutions, Inc. as the Founder and CEO. Previous roles include management positions at consulting practices such as Charter Consulting, Future Next Consulting, Horizon Consulting, and Accenture. Eventric focuses on technologies to improve the live event experience.

Aileen Chen is now an Integration Manager for Strategic Accounts at Marin Software. Her previous position includes multiple roles at RedEnvelope.com.

Guy Courtin joins as the Director of Marketing at SmartOps. Guy leaves i2 Technologies where he served as a Senior Manager in marketing.

Ned Desmond became President at GoSportn, Inc. a new online community for outdoor sports enthusiasts. Ned has served senior roles as President at Time Inc. Interactive, President and Editor at Business 2.0, and a Vice President at Infoseek.com.

Madhu Ghosh takes on a new job with ADP as the Sr. Director, Marketing. Madhu was previously the Executive Director for Product Management & Business Operations at The College Board. Other roles include seving as an Assistant Vice President for Program Management and Product Strategy at Dun & Bradstreet.

Kosin Huang moves from her Senior Manager, Competitive Strategy role into the newly created Office of Marketing Excellence at SAP role. Her focus will be to design and build global initiatives to drive pipeline acceleration for SAP’s Global Field Marketing organization and define KPIs and benchmark best practices for measuring marketing success. Kosin previously held analyst roles at The Yankee Group and Harbor Research.

Abhyudaya Kanoria became Manager, Corporate Strategy at Aditya Birla Management Corporation in March 2009. He previously served as a Business Analyst for Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.

Esteban Kolsky became a Consultant at Managed Experiences, Loyal Customers in April 2009. Esteban’s a Star Analyst in the field of customer service and previously served as a Vice President and Practice Leader at eVergance, Research Director at Gartner Group, and CTO of Tiedosta.

Ashwani Kumar left Oracle in January 2009 to become the CEO of a stealth analytics reinvented company. Ashwani held product strategy and development management responsibilities for industry specific BI initiatives at Oracle.

Paul Lambert in February became the Global Head of Architecture at Hoffmann-La Roche. He now leads the Information Architecture, Application Architecture and Technology (Infrastructure) Architecture groups for Roche Pharma. Previous roles include Global Head of Application Architecture at Hoffmann-La Roche and Astra Zeneca.

Eric Lundquist has been named Vice President for Strategic Content at Ziff Davis Enterprise. Eric previously served as Content Director for New Media Products at IDG. Eric brings decades of experience from serving as the Editor-in-Chief at eWEEK Magazine (formerly PC Week, Editor-in-Chief at Ziff Davis Enterprise, and Editor-in-Chief PC Week/eWeek at Ziff-Davis

Michael McDermott has been promoted from Director to Vice President of Corporate Development at QL2 Software. Mike’s served roles as Senior Product Manager at Amazon.com, Competitive Intelligence Manager at Microsoft, and Competitive Intelligence Senior Manager at PeopleSoft.

Michael Murphy is now Vice President Business Development at Martiz Research Canada. Mike served as Star Sales Professional at Forrester responsible for the Canadian IT Vendor market. Prior to Forrester, Mike was at IBM.

Thomas Raschke has left Forrester Research to join Verizon Business as a Senior Product Marketing Manager in Government, Risk, and Compliance. Thomas served as an analyst at both Forrester Research and IDC in previous career experiences.

Yuval Shavit is now QA Engineer at Kiva Systems. He formerly served as an assistant editor at Tech Target for searchITChannel.

Inhi Cho Suh was promoted in January 2009 to a Vice President of Product Strategy at IBM. She’s responsible for driving portfolio strategy, marketing, and industry solutions for IBM’s information management division which is comprised on DB2, Informix, Optim, Filenet, InfoSphere, and Cognos. Previous roles at IBM include serving as a Vice President of Management Marketing and Director of BPM and strategy.

Doug Topken becomes the Director of Global eCommerce Programs at Elsevier – Division of Reed Elsevier. Previous roles include serving as the Vice President for Business Relationship Management.

Donna Troy was promoted to VP and GM of Large Enterprise Americas at Dell in January 2009. She previously served as the Vice President and General Manager for Corporate Accounts Division. Donna brings a wealth of channel and sales experience as EVP of Global SME Indirect Channels at SAP, EVP of Global SMB and channel sales at McAfee, and CEO of Partnerware.

Carl Zetie has become a Member of Foundation Strategy Committee at Eclipse Foundation. Carl currently serves as a strategist at IBM and Advisory Council Member at Utest, the usability community. Previous roles include serving as a Star Analyst at Giga Information Group and Forrester Research.

Your POV

Got a scoop or something to share? Please post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com and we’ll keep your anonymity.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions. However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Wednesday’s Whispers: The Word On The Street – March 2009

R "Ray" Wang — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:33:45 +0000

PEOPLE WHISPERS: MOVES, PROMOTIONS, AND MILESTONES*

Nigel Alcock is now the new Sales Director for the UK and Ireland at Lawson Software. Nigel joins Lawson from previous roles at SAP.

David Boulanger is now GLG Educator at Gerson Lehrman Group. David was formerly an industry analyst and research director for CRM at Aberdeen Group.

Eric Chow became an International Business Consultant at the University of San Francisco – Massagung School of Business in September 2008. His past positions include serving as a Senior Project Manager at Williams Sonoma and a Systems Project Manager at Providian Financial.

Oliver Claude became Program Director at InfoSphere MDM Product Management at IBM in October 2008. Msr. Claude formerly served as a Worldwide Business Unit Executive for the InfoSphere Sales Consulting In a Product Strategy Role. Prior to IBM, he was a Lead Architect in Sales Consulting, CRM, CRM Analytics, and CDI at Siebel Systems.

Steve Cole is now a VP of Marketing at Gladson Interactive. Steve brings a rich history of marketing experiences serving as a former VP of Solutions Marketing at SPSS, SVP of Marketing and Strategy at Click Commerce, and VP of Marketing at ClearCross.

Robert C. Cresanti was named Vice President of Government relations at SAP America Inc., a subsidiary of SAP AG. In his new role, he will lead SAP’s federal and state government relations activities, support and advise SAP’s public sector group, and manage SAP’s non-profit relationships in DC. Rob joins SAP from the Gray Company, a public relations and lobbying firm. He was the former Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology during the Bush Administration.

Rob Enselin was appointed as President, SAP North America. Enselin has served at SAP for 16 years. Previous roles include President and Chief Executive Officer of SAP Japan and Interim President and CEO for SAP Latin America.

Mohammed Ghadyali is now Senior Manager at North Highland Group. Mo brings a wealth of healthcare consulting experience from powerhouse consultancies such as IBM, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, Booz Allen and Hamilton, Ernst and Young, and Deloitte.

Michael Hickins is now an independent Journalist/Blogger/Editor for a variety of technology media including Bnet. Michael has served roles including the Executive Editor at Webscanner, Executive Editor at eWeek, and Executive Editor at Ziff Davis Enterprise.

Jessica (Sweeten) Hood is now Senior Account Executive at AlertSite She was formerly a Senior Account Manager at Forrester Research.

Thanh Huynh became President at Mercury Tax Service in November 2008. Thanh bring a strong tax perspective from experiences as a Director at KLA-Tencor Corp and Oracle Corporation.

Sandeep Kumar now serves as a Senior Advisor with TPI after spending more than a decade and half being at service providers such as SAP, Wipro and PwC.

Rob Lloyd named as Executive Vice President, Worldwide Operations at Cisco. Rob will run Cisco’s Worldwide Sales, Worldwide Channels, Internet Business Solutions Group and Strategic Alliances organizations.

Fred McClimans became CIO at DTECH LABS in January 2009. Fred’s served roles as Founder and Chairman of the Board at Current Analysis and as an Editorial Contributor at Network World.

Robert McNeill has been an Advisory Board Member at Saugatuck Technology. He’s also the Founder at ThoughtBright.

Peter Quinn has been named Chief Customer Officer at Lawson Software. Peter will lead Lawson’s new Customer Experience Office. He formerly ran marketing operations and is a tech industry veteran in customer experience.

Sarah Reed joins Eloqua as the Director of Corporate Communications. She brings a wealth of experience from similar roles at Vignette and IONA technologies.

Tom Rubenak is now a Technology Advisor Gartner Group. Tom has served in many technology roles at leading advisory and analyst firms such as a manager at Forrester Research, Business Analyst at Dun & Bradstreet, and Sales Director at META Group.

Benjamin Wan is now Vice President of Sales and Business Development at TheBroth, a FaceBook Apps company, and on the Board of Advisors at Motally, a firm focused on mobile analytics.

CORPORATE WHISPERS

Hearing from investment bankers, venture capitalists, and enterprenuers the following:

A growing fear among the innovative class that the current political climate may deter innovation. As the public sector continues to increase in size and presence, there seems to be an inclination to decrease incentives that support entrepreneurial activities.
US health care costs are out of control but will not necessarily drive an enmasse shift away from Silicon Valley to other countries like Canada or China.
Merger and acquisition market will continue to be led by the last vendors standing. IPO market, well, that’s pretty much dead.
Clean tech looks promising but lacks a good coordinating body.

Got a scoop or something to share? Please post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com and we’ll keep your anonymity.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions. However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Monday’s Musings: Master Data Management – Do Styles of MDM Matter Anymore?

R "Ray" Wang — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:04:16 +0000

Three Architectural Styles Represent Different Technologies To Build MDM

In 2003, customer data hub (CDI), product information management, and master data management (MDM) vendors strived to differentiate themselves by architectural style. Each approach had its advantages and disadvantages. A religion about styles emerged overnight along with a hard core following. Here’s a quick recap (see Figure 1):

Figure 1. The Three Architectural Styles of Master Data Management

The bottom line – choose a style that aligns with your project’s business driver
While these approaches still exist, leading vendors such as D&B Purisma, IBM, Initiate Systems, Oracle, Oracle-Siebel, SAS DataFlux, and Siperian now have offerings in more than one style. This may make the question seem less relevant, however, its still important to understand the trade-offs while beginning your MDM journey. In fact, it’s best to align the style and approach based on your business driver. Here’s a high level summary:

Cross-referenced registry delivers rapid results for operational efficiency business drivers. This approach is best suited for rapid implementation scenarios such as POC’s that prove the value of master data. Also valuable when data can not be stored on-site.
Pro’s: Rapid implementation without having to agree on a common enterprise data model. Utilize existing source systems.
Con’s: Deduplication of source systems not addressed. Data quality must be solved in each independent source system.
Hybrid harmonized reference enables compliance and regulatory business drivers. This approach allows the best of both worlds, especially when moving to a transactional operational data store is not politically feasible and data governance and stewardship activities are just starting up.
Pro’s: Single master copy of reference data. Uses links to access source system records. Model allows data quality efforts to be applied to shared master reference data.
Con’s: Synchronization with source systems can create some complexity if changes are not made in the hub.
Transactional operational data store supports strategic business drivers. This approach provides a long term path for how legacy applications utilize data.
Pro’s: Single master copy of data. No fussing with latency or synchronization issues. Minimal mapping issues.
Con’s: Requires an agreed upon common enterprise data model to be used by all applications. History must be harmonized and requires extensive key mapping. Assumes homogeneity and requires tons of ETL and dedupe.

Your POV.

Which MDM style are you deploying? What successes have you seen? Post your thoughts or send me a private email to rwang0@gmail.com.

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Event Report: IBM Unveils the Information Agenda at IOD 2008

R "Ray" Wang — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 07:30:19 +0000

IBM’s third annual Information On Demand event emerges as part of the “Must Attend” list of Enterprise Software pow wows. More than 7000 attendees were treated to 600 technical skill building sessions and 120 business leadership sessions. This year’s theme focused on the need to create an Information Agenda to sustain a competitive advantage and achieve business optimization. Some interesting perspectives from the event:

Business optimization growth is twice as fast than business automation growth. IBM makes the case that workforce productivity, customer profitability, financial risk insight, and other optimization applications gain more traction than automation apps like ERP, HR, Financials, and CRM. POV: The era of automation emphasis is coming to an end. After years of depositing data into systems, enterprises seek value from all the information in their ERP, CRM, or HR system. Users expect more than automation from systems and want actionable insight designed for roles that are proactively delivered.

IBM is positioned for business optimization via its acquisitions in Information On Demand. The thesis – IBM is delivering information assets via DB2, FileNet, and Informix. Business value in this trusted information can be unlocked via InfoSphere and then realize optimized business performance via business intelligence (i.e. Cognos). POV: Delivering an Information Agenda requires a tightly integrated stack. This requires significant integration of canonical data models, business processes, meta data, and semantic information. While IBM has made progress in bringing together its acquisitions, at this point in time no vendor has truly delivered on this from a software basis. Considerable amounts of professional services help is still required for success.

Customers See Value In an Information Agenda, now that they know what to call it…

As I was there to give talks on integrated data management strategies – Track 2787: The ROI of Instance Consolidation and Track 2792: The Business Value of Integrated Data Management,it was refreshing to find an information focused audience. Here are some interesting conversation snippets and observations:

Customers desperately seeking access to “real-time” and “near-time” data from legacy apps.
Everyone wants more device delivery choices.
The stack war will be Blue vs Red in the next 3 to 5 years.
Operational business intelligence critical for actionable insight.
BI is not a luxury during a downturn but a necessity for success.
Data archiving plays an interesting role in data optimization and meeting compliance requirements
MDM continues to gain traction as deal volumes have picked up in Q3 and Q4. This could be the “last big spend” before 2009 as a VP of Apps at a large CPG firm expressed.

Your POV

Have you created your own information agenda? Does this term resonate with you? Has your organization shifted from treating data as a commodity to valuing information as an asset? Post a comment or privately reach out to me at rwang0@gmail.com .