Enterprise gets social: Twitter-style data streams, engagement ‘apps’
Enterprise software developers are just as talented as their free-wheeling consumer-facing peers, but are shackled by the need to prioritise enterprise security over personal utility, and by the fact that IT buyers differ significantly from IT users, as 37 Signals' Jason Fried has pointed out. But a new breed of enterprise software seeks to overlay and augment crufty old systems with dynamic, user-friendly social software, and may well become a $4bn market within the next five years, according to Wells Fargo analyst Jason Maynard.
Data, not surprisingly, is both the engine behind this shift and the glue sticking it all together.
Enterprise software systems, new or old, throw off immense amounts of data, or "digital exhaust". With the rise of programmable interfaces, or APIs, getting access to that exhaust is easier than ever, but data is only useful if harnessed, made comprehensible, and turned to business value.
Unfortunately, most data is "exhaust" in the traditional sense of the word: waste. If enterprises collect data they do so in data warehouses that sit largely untapped. This is a shame given the potential of data to transform the way we work.
Enter the data stream. Read more...
John Deere plows into agile
John Deere & Co., has moved about 800 software developers into an agile development process, and did so in just over a year.
This effort involved recreating the farm equipment maker's software development effort around new teams that included developers, systems engineers, customer support and marketing personnel, testers, all working in lose proximity.
This company, which reported $32 billion in revenue last year, replaced its cubicles with U-shaped pods that removed barriers to team interaction.
The move to agile came "after some serious introspection in our development organization," said Tony Thelen, the director of the Intelligent Solutions Group, part of the company's enterprise IT operation. Read more...
What today’s software developers need to know
Today's software developers don't have to worry about many things that their predecessors used to, like coding to minimize RAM consumption even if it means significantly longer execution time, or WAN connections maxing out at 14.4 kilobits per second. (Although, there may be some out-of-fashion skills they could benefit from or that may yet regain relevance.)
However, the reverse is also true: There are many new skills and areas of expertise that today's software developers, hardware developers, system and network administrators, and other IT professionals need that simply didn't exist in the past (where "the past" could be anything from "more than three months ago" to five, 10, 20, or more years) or were only relevant for organizations and applications with immense budgets.
"The list of what you need today that you didn't need before depends on how long ago you went to school, how hard you've worked to keep up on technology, the software industry, and software engineering," says David Intersimone, Vice President of Developer Relations and Chief Evangelist for Embarcadero Technologies. Read more...
Apple poised to introduce iCloud
Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is taking a break from medical leave on Monday to preside over the opening of the company's annual conference for software developers.
And in a break from Apple's usual practice of shrouding its events in an air of mystery, the California gadget-maker this time revealed ahead of time what it plans to announce at the event in San Francisco. Read more...