January 1, 2003
http://www.iemagazine.com:8080/030101/602feat1_2.jhtml
The 2003 Editors' Choice Awards: The Dozen
Which 12 entities are most influential in the creaton of intelligent enterprises? Look no further; we've identified them here.
Teradata, a division of NCR Corp.
Dayton, Ohio
"It's alive!" Dr. Frankenstein exclaimed when he saw his creation respond to the fusion of brain with brawn. Ever since the beginnings of decision-support systems (DSS), database architects have dreamed of the day when their creations would awaken from a passive state to embody something quite different: an active, self-adjusting, intelligent system. That day is getting closer.
Teradata, a division of NCR Corp., has been building toward this moment for a long time. In fact, so has its parent company: NCR actually acquired Teradata back in 1991, the same year that NCR was itself acquired by AT&T as the centerpiece of that company's ill-fated foray into the computer market. Teradata, one of the original "database machines" and featuring a distinctive parallel engine, was already the secret DSS weapon for a number of large corporations, particularly in retail. AT&T granted NCR independence in 1997, and the company's core focus since has been to provide solutions that "transform information into more enduring, more profitable relationships."
Strategic IT's importance aims a bright spotlight on Teradata — finally. In DSS and business intelligence (BI), the 1990s were dominated by distributed data marts; line of business and departmental users wanted analytic capabilities without having to dance with IT. The resulting landscape — littered with data silos and unfulfilled expectations — has both users and IT thinking hard about the virtues of DSS consolidation. For Teradata, this means that the pendulum is swinging into its core area of strength.
Sleeping Giant No More
"Data transformation becomes much more interesting once you've got the data in the database, where you've got parallelism, scalability, and all the other desirable features," said Stephen Brobst, Teradata's CTO. "We need to take the data from a physically distributed world and bring it together so that you can do sophisticated analytics." And unlike competitive products that were built initially as OLTP engines and have had to use creative means to support DSS-style queries, Teradata has never had any conflict of interest.
Now, the company is on a quest to expand analytic power by bringing data mining and other key analytic functions into the database engine. The added brainpower will meet up with technology enhancements in Teradata Warehouse 7.0 for "active" data warehousing to keep pace with demand for real-time BI, fresher data, and automated administration.
Intelligent enterprises depend on a tight link between analytics and business processes, which means that the traditionally passive, batch-oriented mindset often won't cut it. Teradata, captain of many terabytes, is about to wake some sleeping giants. And Teradata deserves the Number One spot in the Dozen for 2003.
MAJOR MOVES IN 2002
· Named Mark Hurd, longtime head of Teradata division, to be COO of NCR
· Released Profitability Analytics and Data Mining Accelerator packages
· Introduced Teradata Warehouse 7.0, with upgraded database engine for "active" data warehouses
INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISES
· 3M, 2002 RealWare Award winner, uses Teradata and NCR WorldMark MPP hardware to drive enterprise BPM analysis
· Medco Health, 2002 RealWare Award winner, analyzes millions of weekly prescriptions dispensed from a variety of sources
SAS Institute Inc.
Cary, N.C.
Breadth or depth? Vertical or horizontal? These are the conundrums facing BI software vendors. Is it better to specialize in custom analytics tailored to key decision makers' roles in vertical industries, business processes, or functions? Or should BI vendors strive instead to supply broad-based tools and data warehouse/data mart systems applicable to any number of contexts?
With BI tools such as Enterprise Guide, analytic packages designed for corporate officers, and a leading data warehousing and integration package, SAS Institute has established a strong reputation for "horizontal" software. However, a visit to a SAS user group conference (SUGI) will tell you that the company's 25-year run has been successful due to its ability to close in on custom needs in statistics, analytics, and data integration. "We're not talking about BI," said Jim Goodnight, SAS cofounder, chairman, and CEO at a 2002 SUGI. "We're talking about heavy-duty analytical needs — how companies can get the most out of their massive investment in data."
Depth is what continues to make SAS an exciting company. Responding to the credibility challenges facing CEOs and corporate financial managers, SAS pulled together Financial Management Solution. SAS also saw the trouble manufacturers and suppliers have interpreting data coming from supply and demand chains. In response, SAS is gunning to become a prominent player in supplier relationship management and optimization, hinting that it might compete with the likes of i2 Technologies and Manugistics. SAS is already on the way to leadership in intelligent marketing automation, perhaps ultimately subsuming the role of operational products from vendors such as Siebel Systems.
The Power To Wait
SAS was on track to go public; it was busily building brand recognition around a trademark phrase, "the power to know," and a compelling vision of what makes an intelligent enterprise tick. The stock market fell off a cliff: but SAS didn't go with it, remaining private instead. As it evolves toward solutions, its next IPO encounter may come as a different kind of company, with more services and thus a deeper involvement in the customer life cycle of its products.
Business performance management (BPM) is a key crossover point between analytics and operations — and an area of concentration for many systems integration and ERP providers. SAS is elbowing in on this turf: The company's acquisition of ABC Technologies immediately made it a player in tools for activity-based management and Balanced Scorecard-style metrics. Supplying analytical depth, SAS is enabling customers to raise intelligence across the breadth of their enterprises.
MAJOR MOVES IN 2002
· Acquired ABC Technologies, provider of activity·based analytic management software
· Celebrated 25 years of "continued revenue growth"
· Introduced IntelliVisor for Pharma, an ASP for pharmaceutical companies
INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISES
· Bank of Scotland uses Enterprise Miner as the centerpiece of customer analysis and campaign management
· Quaker Chemical runs its collaborative, Web·based BI system, reaching multiple enterprise applications, with SAS
IBM Corp.
Armonk, N.Y.
Autonomic computing: As we head into 2003, perhaps no other phrase is buzzing as hotly as this one. IBM got it started with a speech given on Oct. 15, 2001 by Paul Horn, senior vice president of IBM Research. The objective: "Build computer systems that regulate themselves much in the same way our autonomic nervous system[s] regulate and protect our bodies," IBM's Web site reports from Horn's speech. In 2002, a year in which IBM Research shattered barriers to the development of computing at a molecular level — advances that may in the long run have civilization-altering impact — it was "autonomic computing" and the notion of self-healing systems that rang the most profound chord.
Why? Because the body is not well: Surveys report variously that IT must spend 80 percent or more of its time, energy, and money on maintaining infrastructure, leaving little for discretionary activities. Many businesses are choking on IT — and those that aren't have grown leery of stepping into the big ring for fear of TCO body blows. Automation, the productivity goal of so much computing, "produces complexity as an unavoidable byproduct," an IBM white paper observes. Forget the brain in the box: dealing with complexity is "our next Grand Challenge," says IBM.
IBM's new chairman, Sam Palmisano, is staking the company's growth into on-demand business computing on how well it handles the Grand Challenge. And he has elevated a long-time IBMer with varied experience like himself into a prominent leadership role: Irving Wladawsky-Berger, who as of this writing is vice president of IBM Server Group Technology and Strategy. Without discounting the contributions of other key IBM executives, Wladawsky-Berger has proven most able to deliver the holistic view — the big, bold vision of how IBM can heal the IT body.
Do No Harm
Self-healing software became the top-line story in the release of DB2 version 8, supported by an array of tools designed to elevate the DBA's lot above performance tuning tedium — and discreetly take a tad more control over the costs and implementation of DB2. Oracle and IBM duked it out all year, but both surely have an eye on the market growth and price pressure coming from Microsoft SQL Server. IBM is hard at work earning DBAs' trust that its tools will keep their databases out of the emergency room.
Those still puzzling over IBM's Linux evangelism found more to noodle over with the direction of Websphere, the heart of IBM's application development, middleware, and perhaps someday, even collaboration portfolios. Websphere embraces Eclipse, the open source platform for tool integration. IBM seems to think open source is hardly a "cancer" — and is in fact a significant part of the cure.
MAJOR MOVES IN 2002
· Acquired PWC Consulting for $3.5 billion, enlarging IBM Global Services
· Introduced DB2 v.8; released Content Manager v.8
· Released Websphere Studio 5.0
INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISES
· CareTouch Inc., 2002 RealWare Award winner, uses the Websphere platform to support one·stop shopping for caregivers and their patients
· Experian Automotive, 2002 RealWare Award winner, runs its National Vehicle Database on DB2 and IBM servers
OutlookSoft Corp.
Stamford, Conn.
First, it was lack of visibility: Didn't see the recession coming. Then, as Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom, and others ignominiously crashed down, it became a legal problem of corporate governance. By August, household names were scrambling to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which required top corporate executives to swear under oath that financial statements submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission were accurate. The whole mess became the top business story of 2002. For investors — and perhaps indirectly, the entire economy — the problem became a deep loss of confidence.
Technology can't fix ethical problems; but it's clear that for financial management to keep up with the speed, complexity, and new legal requirements of today's economy, an infusion of intelligent software wouldn't hurt. The spreadsheet — killer app of some 20 years ago — needs reinvention. With integrated databases, online analytic processing (OLAP), Web interfaces, and business performance metrics, the elements are there. Somebody just has to put it all together — and keep the beloved spreadsheet in middle of the picture, of course.
OutlookSoft's timing couldn't be better. Founded in 1999, OutlookSoft is a rising star in BPM software. The company's pedigree goes deeper: Its leadership stands on long experience in the field with Hyperion Software. With Enterprise Analytic Portal (EAP), OutlookSoft's goal is to create a nexus for the disparate activities that go into planning, optimizing, and analyzing business performance. These include budgeting, forecasting, consolidation, and strategic planning — the financial management activities that are under such fire today.
Joining the Enterprise
Underlying OutlookSoft's approach is a fervent desire to open the eyes of corporate strategists so that they gain, in the company's words, "a single, holistic view of total organizational performance." To accomplish this, OutlookSoft has cast its technology lot with Microsoft, which makes eminent sense considering the dominance of Microsoft Excel. Some of EAP's secret sauce is its tight integration with Excel — but it can also make sauce with general ledger, ERP, and other applications.
The data infrastructure allows users to reach that Holy Grail: a single version of the truth. Within reach of OutlookSoft users are both structured and unstructured data sources. EAP also makes state-of-the-art use of the Web to disseminate financial results and analysis, which alone is a huge time-waster at most organizations. By unifying data sources and key processes, OutlookSoft furthers collaboration between managers from different lines of business, which is essential if BPM efforts are to succeed.
MAJOR MOVES IN 2002
· Named Michael Morini as COO
· Partnered with McKesson Information Solutions to develop solutions exclusive to the healthcare market
INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISES
· Dell Computer Corp. replaced internal databases and spreadsheets with EAP for corporate forecasting
· US Sugar uses EAP for comprehensive planning and performance management
Business Objects SA
Paris/San Jose, Calif.
BI is in a time of transition. Industry maturity and tighter times have led to a fight for survival among the fittest. The very success of BI has customers holding vendors up to mission-critical standards for performance, reliability, and scalability — further winnowing out the contenders. Meanwhile, enterprise application and database vendors, always alert to opportunities to subsume third-party tools and leave less money on the table, want a piece of the pie. BI, data warehousing, OLAP, and analytics are becoming embedded in larger solutions, thereby enlarging the gray areas among once-familiar technology sectors.
Business Objects, safely among the survivors, has never been one to rest under the shady tree of an installed base. It could: With an impressive cache of customers, Business Objects regularly appears in the top echelon of market surveys and product rankings, including the Intelligent Enterprise Readers' Choice Awards. Dedicated to the mainstream expansion of BI to help organizations of all sizes improve operational efficiency, customer interaction, and overall business performance, Business Objects is rarely the kind to revel in the avant garde — but the company knows that the ground is moving beneath its feet.
The Collaborative Dance
Through acquisitions and internal product development, Business Objects spent 2002 preparing itself for the next phase of BI and analytics. One word will dominate: collaborative. It's been clear for some time that tools to empower decision-making can only go so far before they confront the reality that most decisions are made through collaboration with colleagues, business partners, and other key participants. Coming out of a personal productivity legacy, BI tools must now embrace collaboration.
"Sundance," the development name for Business Objects' next generation, is shaping up to be one of 2003's most important releases. With workflow and collaboration features, Sundance is creating a foundation for "operationalizing" BI and analytics on an enterprise scale. Through exploitation of portal dashboards and Web technologies, Sundance will enable organizations to communicate business objectives more effectively. Rules-based BI processes, metrics, and best practices are key components of the Sundance arsenal.
The 2002 Acta Technology acquisition was critical. It strengthened the company's ability to develop analytic applications that work with ERP systems, such as SAP R/3.
Even as it matures, the very nature of BI leaves the sector refreshingly open to invention and variation. Rising to the collaborative challenge, Business Objects is poised to lead its customers to the frontier of strategic advantage.
MAJOR MOVES IN 2002
· Acquired Acta Technology, data integration provider
· Acquired Blue Edge Software, maker of portal software for corporate intranets
INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISES
· Maxtor Corp. uses Business Objects' platform to gain a single view into operational data residing in multiple, distributed applications
· The U.S. State Department uses WebIntelligence query and reporting software as part of its system to track potential terrorist threats
Microsoft Corp.
Redmond, Wash.
Stagnation is Microsoft's worst nightmare. Letting dust collect on toolbars, ignoring entreaties to upgrade core productivity tools, and generally choosing to live with the status quo: These behaviors won't keep the home fires burning through the damp, dark Redmond winter. Such stillness invites the specter of Linux — of an open source poison that seeps into the vacuum and loosens the company's grip on the future. Even in the worst of times, Microsoft must find ways to stoke demand and lead its immense installed base to do the right thing: Upgrade.
Microsoft has always been exceptionally quick to notice when stagnation, bloat, and a false sense of security have set in with competitors. The company's splashy October introduction of MSN 8 served notice on its next victim: AOL Time Warner, the dominant consumer Web gateway that spent 2002 shooting itself in the foot. After a few years of youthful floundering, MSN has a calling. It's the user instantiation of what was the ephemeral concept of .Net Web services. Most importantly, it's a software product — and selling products is in Microsoft's DNA.
Microsoft is ready to change the Web game to its advantage — and in so doing, build the critical mass that will finally accelerate Web services software development. Again, Microsoft is merely drawing on its DNA, in the same way that it stoked the PC fires with DOS and Windows in the days of yore. This time, the company is betting that the primordial age of online advertising and free content is about to give way to e-business and its irreducible currency: transactions.
XML: The Elixir
The current state of e-business affairs represents a classic Microsoft opportunity. And what's happening with XML is a familiar tale: Microsoft has once again fallen in love with an emerging open standard and is moving faster than its competitors to offer the de facto implementation. Coupled with other Web services standards, XML could do for transactions what the emergence of remote procedure calls, electronic data interchange, and SQL (ODBC) did for an earlier age. The biggest challenge is to make it all work over the asynchronous, loosely coupled structure of the Internet.
XML has given Microsoft the common blood to perform the next great unification of its technology portfolio, including SQL Server and its Analysis Services. Visual Studio .Net was the company's key release of the year; this massive software development product embodied the .Net Web services vision. The .Net push is also bringing focus to the company's aggressive move into midmarket enterprise applications with Great Plains, Axapta, and Navision.
Microsoft's infrastructure will sprout reasons for customers to upgrade — and keep the green stuff flowing into Redmond.
MAJOR MOVES IN 2002
· Released Visual Studio .Net
· Acquired Navision A/S; upgraded Microsoft Project Management
· Created technology and marketing partnership with Siebel Systems
INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISES
· The Madrid Stock Exchange created an Internet·based automated trade processing system using SQL Server and Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
· LifeMinders uses SQL Server to run its large data warehouse, supporting massive personalized marketing efforts
Manhattan Associates Inc.
Atlanta
The road to the promised land of operational excellence is long and perilous. Ghosts of failed systems haunt the supply chain management (SCM) landscape. Problems solved only seem to reveal problems unknown. Firebrand revolutionaries rail at the imperfect state of affairs. Burned-out shells of B2B IPOs creak in the howling wind. The survivors know that they are but one high-profile disaster away from adding to the wreckage. Success takes courage, dedication, concentration, and, as it turns out, humility.
Manhattan Associates, founded in 1990, wisely didn't try to solve it all overnight. The company's founders began chipping away at the problem of supply chain execution within the confines of the U.S. clothing manufacturing industry. Beginning with PkMS, the company's core engine initially targeted for IBM AS/400 (now iSeries) platforms, Manhattan Associates attacked inefficiencies in how suppliers managed warehouses and moved goods through distribution channels. Eleven years later, the publicly traded concern boasts more than 800 employees and as many customers at over a thousand facilities worldwide. And it has been continuously profitable, quite a feat given what troubled times have done to others.
"Technology is very important," said CEO Richard Haddrill in an interview with TWST.com. "However, reliability and functionality of the products are even more important." This alignment of priorities has served Manhattan Associates well in a sector where resilience is critical and failure can mean millions. The company has steadily added products to PkMS to enable, among other things, BI-style reporting, analysis, monitoring, and measurement — and extension beyond the walls to collaborative relationships. A technology partnership with Microsoft is guiding Manhattan Associates' implementation of XML in the direction of BizTalk Server and .Net, although the company held its cards close by trumping up a similar relationship with Sun Microsystems.
Supply Chain Becomes Strategic
Led by Haddrill and a board that includes founders Alan Dabbiere and Deepak Raghavan, Manhattan Associates has brought aboard seasoned personnel who can enable the company to accelerate its pace toward a dominant competitive position in supply chain execution in a range of industries. It has pulled new and existing technology pieces together to create x-SCE, "the first real suite for supply chain execution," in the company's view — and many analysts agree. The future will add "intelligent response" and self-healing technology to support the event management cycle.
Customer demands for variety, competitive imperatives to reduce latency, and globalization have made SCM strategic. Manhattan Associates' rise is well-timed to provide leadership in facing down the challenges.
MAJOR MOVES IN 2002
· Created Extended Supply Chain Execution (x·SCE) strategy, introducing a suite of industry·focused solutions
· Released new version of PkMS, focusing on collaborative management of distribution centers
INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISES
· The Limited uses WMS to support a complex distribution environment with multiple platforms and systems
· Mikasa employs PkMS to support its supply chain, reducing delivery time by more than half
PeopleSoft Inc.
Pleasanton, Calif.
The pressure is on. Sure, there's the economy; but the bigger issue is how to meet expectations raised by enterprise applications. Users are getting antsy; they want to be smarter, faster, and more profitable. As the commoditization tide rises and profit margins get thinner, what can these packaged applications give them that their competitors don't have? When will all this CRM stuff become an enabler — rather than a straightjacket, or worse, a doorstop?
PeopleSoft's response has been to aim higher. The company began 2002 as the chief articulator of the "real-time enterprise." Perhaps gauging customers' inability to stomach high-concept strategies, the enterprise application software provider geared down as the year progressed, targeting more concrete solutions. Things such as HelpDesk for Human Resources: Hitting a PeopleSoft stronghold, this solution brings CRM technology to bear on employee relationships. Topical financial disclosure and homeland security problems were also met by specific PeopleSoft solutions.
However, PeopleSoft's vision of the real-time enterprise sticks in the mind. What does it take for an organization to react immediately to change — and to deliver information about changing conditions to people and applications at the moment they most need it? For answers, PeopleSoft is looking beyond specific software applications to focus on business processes that flow through the applications. In a collaborative world based on Web services, business processes will likely engage any number of heterogeneous, best-of-breed applications, as needed, in a nonlinear fashion. As PeopleSoft sees it, you can forget the proprietary monolith. Key 2002 releases such as the AppConnect Suite embody the company's determination to put integration at the core.
Analytics and Metrics
Integration is the foundation of PeopleSoft's Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) approach to analytics and metrics, which enables business processes to support decision-making, forecasting, and workforce analysis — strategic activities that will allow applications to deliver. PeopleSoft's view is that the real-time enterprise needs these activities running apace with business processes, not as an afterthought — and not within analytic application silos. PeopleSoft wants to move beyond the current schism separating BI and processes. The real-time enterprise aspires to close the loop, linking operations with intelligence.
EPM focuses on embedding analytics deeper into business processes, so that user dashboards, for example, can display the results of analysis and provide essential context supporting interaction with customer prospects. Closing the loop, the value proposition — the competitive edge — delivered by the software investment becomes unmistakable.
MAJOR MOVES IN 2002
· Acquired SkillsVillage to strengthen services procurement solutions
· Released Supplier Relationship Management, specializing on vertical industry practices
· Released AppConnect Suite, a solution integrating portal, application integration, and data warehouse technology
INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISES
· PepsiAmericas uses PeopleSoft 8 CRM to create 360-degree views of customers, and integrate with financials and human resources
· London Drugs uses PeopleSoft Portal to connect with employees at all locations, dramatically reducing end-user training costs
Oracle Corp.
Redwood Shores, Calif.
In 2001, like an artist admiring his work, Larry Ellison called Oracle 9i "the last database." A year later, with profits and revenues falling, he declared the end of an era. The high-tech industry's malaise was beyond cyclical. Ellison suggested that enterprise software was already going down the path trod by the once-lively PC software industry toward suites from a handful of behemoth providers. "Our model is Microsoft," he declared.
Call it wishful thinking, shrewd assessment, or mere generational gloom and doom, Oracle's cofounder, CEO, and chairman is setting course for a very different reality. Several years of internal reorganizations and the departure of high-profile executives have sharpened Ellison's aura of singular authority during a time of transition. As a sailor, he knows that when the winds change, the skipper has to adjust — or else find his ship at the mercy of an angry sea.
All In the Database
"It's time to gut it out and get to a more repeatable business model," said Jeff Henley, Oracle's executive vice president and CFO, back in June 2002. To get there, the company enumerated three "business growth opportunities" it would pursue: outsourcing, Oracle's new Collaboration Suite, and Oracle's 11i E-Business Suite for the mid-market. In other words, Ellison must steer Oracle toward a different relationship with its customers; a more expansive data universe; and a diffuse market sector that will challenge the company's ingrained behavior.
Of course, the unchanging element — and competitive differentiator — unifying Oracle's pursuit of opportunity is the database. The company's midyear Release 2 upgrade to Oracle 9i brought XML DB into the engine, with new SQL functions that let the system treat XML data as relational data — but also "let XML be XML" by storing and retrieving things in their context. Oracle integrated the database with 9i's Java-based Application Server, a multidimensional OLAP engine, data mining server, data warehousing tools, and several other technologies, including the much-ballyhooed Real Application Clusters. There might even be a kitchen sink in there somewhere.
The inclusion of Oracle's Internet File System allowed the company to put unstructured data collaboration within its sights. If Collaboration Suite succeeds in taking market share away from the current rulers of the realm, it could signify the dawning of a newly expansive era. After all, the data's out there: The database industry's conquest slowed down primarily because the technology had not evolved to capture it. Now perhaps it has. Rising demand for the application of data management principles to unstructured content could be the fresh breeze Oracle needs to fill its sails.
MAJOR MOVES IN 2002
· Introduced Oracle 9i release 2, incorporating BI, OLAP, and ETL features
· Created partnership with Red Hat and Dell Computer to deliver solution for Linux platforms
· Released Collaborative Suite, a solution designed to give database support to email and collaborative messaging
INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISES
· Best Buy uses Oracle for a 4+ terabyte data warehouse for analyzing sales and inventory data
· Texas Tech University uses Oracle 9i Real Application Clusters to support IT services
· Burlington Coat Factory uses 9i Application Server Discoverer to support enterprisewide BI
Ilog Inc.
Paris/Mountain View, Calif.
"Automate or die!" was once a billboard slogan along Highway 101 on the way to San Francisco. Ilog, a provider of software components and services, might offer a more positive spin, something like: "Automate and evolve!" In the company's view, automation is part of a cycle that, guided by intelligence, opens up opportunities to do things that were unthinkable previously. In other words, to comprehend automation we must look not just at the ends — such as faster, more efficient, and cost-effective business processes that involve fewer humans — but also at what got us there. Automation is about the application of intelligence; each success enables the application of higher intelligence across a broader spectrum of processes.
Founded in Paris in 1987, the name "Ilog" is an abbreviated version of intelligence logicielle — the French phrase for "intelligent software." The full name tells a great deal about Ilog's vision and what it contributes to enterprise applications. Ilog's software enables companies to exploit automation to pursue strategic goals for competitive advantage, such as improving customer relationships and tightening collaborative commerce operations.
In 2001, Intelligent Enterprise named Ilog to the Dozen for its role as a provider of optimization components, particularly for the supply chain management portfolios of i2 Technologies, Oracle, and SAP. Optimization takes automation to the next level by enabling the system to invoke business decisions with speed and complexity that only software can provide.
Business Rules: The Rosetta Stone
Moving forward, Ilog's software mathematicians will be put to the challenge as organizations look to integrate systems that have their own sets of rules, decision processes, and constraints. At the same time, all these business processes — not to mention sensors, tags, and other media — will produce massive amounts of data, which systems must understand quickly to take action. Intelligence is needed — or else organizations will choke on too much data and become paralyzed by intractable integration problems.
For Ilog, business rules are the key. Articulating the logic of business policies and objectives, business rules distill how a company does business into something software can interpret. Business rules are "intelligent data": And moving to this higher-level concept is critical to achieving objectives such as straight-through processing and XML-based Web services. Ilog's JRules is a leading software package for business rules management.
By exploiting business rules, organizations will be able to weave together agile, automated systems that can quickly leverage the data flowing out of processes and act upon what's most important. It's a vision of intelligence that Ilog can bring into reality.
MAJOR MOVES IN 2002
· Released JConfigurator 2.0, combining business rule management with preference-driven configuration
· Introduced JRules 4.0, improving storage for business rule management
· Released CPlex 8.0 optimization software, with features for asset management and financial planning applications
INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISES
· Vodafone uses the Ilog rules engine to manage rules that enable real-time customer billing for communications services
· Southwest Airlines employs Ilog components to increase the efficiency of its crew scheduling system, leading to better on-time performance
Inxight Software Inc.
Sunnyvale, Calif.
"Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink." If Samuel Taylor Coleridge were alive to receive a nickel for every time this famous line has been lifted from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), he would surely buy a round of Crystal Geyser for the house. He might also take up his feather to write another epic, this time about data — particularly the unstructured variety. Data is everywhere; and in our modern world where nothing disappears, there's more produced every day. Governments, businesses, universities, and even budding poets would like to "drink" from this ubiquitous resource. But as with the ocean, the transformation necessary for its consumption is not trivial.
Inxight Software is an emerging leader in the field of unstructured data management. The company focuses on the "data out" problems of locating, revealing, and analyzing information existing in a sea of data that, for organizations to leverage successfully, requires intelligent automation. Customer interactions and collaborative business processes are dominated by unstructured data. Legal and regulatory compliance, security, personal communication, and other activities also live primarily in a data ecosystem that slips too easily through the fingers of traditional data management. And, needless to say, with surveillance data streaming in and piling up, the U.S. Department of Defense and government intelligence agencies have an urgent need to fill in the war against terrorism.
In other words, it is with far more than casual interest that many organizations — including BI and enterprise software vendors itching to expand out from the traditional data world — are checking out what Inxight and a collection of other players, including Autonomy, Inktomi, Stratify, Webversa, and Verity have to offer. Simultaneously growing and consolidating, the market features a blinding array of tools for categorization, classification, linguistic analysis, search, taxonomy, text mining, and other algorithmic activities. Buyers must choose carefully.
PARC Pedigree
It would be hard for buyers not to take Inxight seriously. Founded in 1997, the company owes its birth to the famed Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (now called "PARC"), where Inxight founder and CTO Ramana Rao performed pioneering research. Holding a large number of patents in visualization, natural language processing, and information retrieval, Inxight already has its technology inside the offerings of several major vendors.
Inxight SmartDiscovery is looking like the suite to beat. Sailing into the unstructured waters, Inxight might look to Coleridge for inspiration: "The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, the furrow followed free; we were the first that ever burst into that silent sea."
MAJOR MOVES IN 2002
· Released Categorizer 3.0, improving taxonomy model management
· Raised $22 million in its fourth round of funding, led by VantagePoint Venture Partners
· Acquired technology assets of WhizBang! Labs, incorporating extraction technology into SmartDiscovery
INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISES
· Computer Associates, which licenses Star Tree visualization software in Unicenter
· USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service uses VizServer and Table Lens technology to analyze very large databases
Open Source/Linux
Anywhere, Planet Earth
The future was supposed to be Coke vs. Pepsi, Unix vs. Windows, Sun Microsystems vs. Microsoft. Java, the wired Robin Hood of software, would turn back the imperial legions from Redmond. It looked like the beginning of a twilight struggle, with ISVs, systems integrators, and customers forced to choose a side — and if they could afford it, both sides — as the battle raged for dominance in a bipolar world.
But a funny thing happened on the way to this scenario: Linux. In 1991, Linus Torvalds planted a seed that untold numbers of programmers carried across the Internet. The collaborative development of the Linux operating system created a "third way," which is attracting growing interest at the enterprise level. No CIO today can consider the future of strategic business applications without a long look at Linux and open source.
The open source movement is older than Linux, at least as old as Unix — and really as old as software itself. In many ways, Linux and open source are picking up where Unix and Java left off — amid proprietary interests, dense standards requirements, and economic pressure squeezing primary sponsors busy trying to maintain enterprise-style margins. Sun was the first to feel the Linux heat. Sun spent much of 2002 defending the relevancy of its crown jewel, Solaris, and enduring criticism about the pace with which it was moving Java into community development. By late summer, CEO Scott McNealy donned the penguin suit: a harbinger of things to come.
Heading into 2003, it looks like Microsoft will be the one to sweat. Well, maybe: the company obviously has enormous resources, including legal, upon which to draw. However, Microsoft has yet to find a strong rebuttal to counter the TCO arguments favoring Linux and open source. Concern may be spreading in Redmond that the architectures of the future — grid computing, clusters, and specialized operating environments, such as embedded and mobile — are heading in the direction of Linux. A malleable, commodity operating system seems to fit the development of such innovations well.
The New Infrastructure
Perhaps by definition, it's difficult to spotlight dominant vendors. However, two bear close attention. The first is Red Hat, which successfully brought reliability to Linux and is thus a key partner of enterprise players such as IBM and Oracle. The second is database software provider MySQL, headed by the outspoken Marten Mickos. Adding support in 2002 for transactions, MySQL is trying to do with databases what Dell Computer did with PCs.
"Open source is disruptive technology," Red Hat declares. Closing out this year's Dozen, look for open source players to shake up next year's list.
MAJOR MOVES IN 2002
· Red Hat released 8.0 version of its Linux distribution
· MySQL delivered 4.0 version, which includes InnoDB transaction engine
· PostgreSQL 7.2 final release delivered in February, followed by several updates during 2002
· Sun Microsystems delivered its Linux distribution to run on new LX50 family of Linux servers
· Caldera International changed its name to SCO Group, uniting Linux with the SCO-branded Unix and OpenServer solutions
· Kylix 3, Borland Software's rapid application development solution running on Linux, won "Best of Show" at LinuxWorld