Progress Software has been recognized as QAD’s Technology Partner of the Year, so we sat down to chat with them about why Progress was picked, what makes a good partnership and how the industry is changing. Progress Guys (PG): In your words, why was Progress selected for this prestigious award? Progress was selected to be Partner of the Year because…

The Federal Government’s poor IT performance is an old story, but it got renewed attention this week because of two new documents.  The first was Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel’s release of his final “Shared First” strategy document which sets guidelines that should lead to better returns on IT investment.  The other event was a memo from Lesley Field, Acting Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy.  Ms. Field laid out steps to make it easier for vendors to provide input and education so government can make smarter technology buys.

So much positive news in the space of a week had me feeling optimistic that we are on a path to stop wasting tax payer money and bring effective IT systems to government.  But my good mood ended when an e-mail hit my inbox with fresh evidence of some of the thinking and behaviors that have caused the Federal government’s IT investments to significantly underperform.

Here’s some background.  The first Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, introduced a 25 Point Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology Management in 2010 because of the sorry state of affairs that existed with government IT systems.  Kundra noted in the introduction to the plan, “despite spending more than $600 billion on information technology over the past decade, the Federal Government has achieved little of the productivity improvements that private industry has realized from IT.”

The uncertainty around Federal contracting rules is one reason for this poor performance.  Both government officials and vendors have been unclear as to what type of communication is sanctioned and what is not.  This has kept government IT leaders’ knowledge of latest technologies and adoption strategies behind the times.  The attention brought by the 25 point plan has spurred other parts of the government to rally and help.  Ms. Field’s memo titled, “Myth-Busting 2: Addressing Misconceptions and Further Improving Communication During the Acquisition Process” is one example.   Ms. Field notes in the memo, “Early, frequent, and constructive engagement with industry leads to better acquisition outcomes, which is why it is one of the key tenets of the Office of Management and Budget’s 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management.“  Ms. Field went on to say further that, “Agencies appreciate industry’s valuable input into their acquisition strategies and solicitation packages because it may result in a better solution to their requirements. Suggesting detailed solutions to your concerns is even more valuable.”

The e-mail that turned my excitement to mush contained a newly released pre-RFP for a major Federal IT system.  The buyer sent out the pre-RFP to learn as much as possible about commercial best practices so it could adopt the best strategy to convert its legacy information systems environment into an agile and flexible operation.  I thought, “Great!  Here’s an agency that really wants to learn and is being proactive ahead of a major purchase.”  But my heart sank when I continued reading and found this sentence, “The agency has determined that the best approach for systems modernization is to use a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution rather than transforming its legacy systems.”  By specifying COTS, the agency had greatly restricted the field of possible solutions.

Things actually got worse from there.  The pre-RFP goes on to detail lots of specific functionality that the buyer says must be already available in the solution.  This sounds like a logical approach to purchasing, but it is way behind the times for IT systems selection.  By following this approach, the buyer is falling into an all-too-common trap that’s been a significant contributor to the $600B of ineffective government IT spending.

Let me explain.  The problem with the approach of limiting choices to COTS applications and evaluating them based on specific functionalities is that to have a successful selection, you need to document every known requirement and predict future requirements.  Not only does this require lots of work, it’s really an impossible task.  Users of IT systems often don’t know what they want (or what’s possible) until they get to start using new technology.  They really need hands-on experience before they can identify their most important requirements.  Evaluating COTS vendors based on specific functionality has shown to be equally flawed.  A full evaluation could determine that certain features are present in a particular product (allowing it to get a “check in the box”), only to have users realize six months after implementation that they didn’t ask for what they really wanted.  Now they are stuck.

So I’m going to accept Ms. Field’s invitation and begin my education for Federal IT buyers right here and now.  There’s one thing I can say that I believe will radically change the performance of Federal IT systems and it’s this:  Stop the COTS madness!

Leading private sector companies like Amazon.com, CME Group, and Crawford have already awoken to the fact that COTS products are attractive because they seem to do all or most of what you need, but in reality they fall short.  What looked good in a demo often has great limitations in practice.  I can hear what’s going through your head right now, “So you just ask the vendor to make a change to the product to fit your needs.”  Good luck.  Buyers of COTS applications all wake up to the fact that they are just one of many customers, each of whom wants changes to fit their needs.  What’s a typical COTS vendor, who has to look out for the interests of its shareholders, going to do?  They have to make hard choices about which customers to make happy and which to leave to find their own solutions.  How do I know?  Because I’ve worked for a number of COTS companies and I’ve seen this play out many times.  I was even the leader of Product Management at some of these companies and it was my job to make the hard decisions.

Instead of coming to an RFP with a COTS mentality and a long list of requirements to check off, Federal IT buyers need to create their RFPs around these principles:

• Ease of adapting a technology to fit evolving needs outweighs any list of current functionality
• You must get economies of scale from any purchase so you can avoid additional software license costs for your next set of needs and give your users the benefits of working from one platform
• Your organization, not the vendor, must have the ability to make adaptations on their own
• Easy movement between cloud and on-premise deployment is a must-have
• Built-in native mobile functionality on all major platforms is a requirement so the need for separate mobile applications can be eliminated
• Social collaboration must also be built-in to help shorten process cycle times

These principles support the goals of the 25 point Federal IT reform plan.  When Federal buyers adopt these principles, they will find themselves drawn towards business process management technology (BPM).  Over 35 Federal agencies are already experiencing great success with Appian’s BPM software, including the US Marine Corps, FDIC, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, FDA, FEMA, The Library of Congress, and Defense Acquisition University.  It’s time to stop the COTS madness and join them.

Want to learn more about the challenges of COTS software?  Read my white paper titled, “Don’t License Another Software Application Until You Read This!”

Evan McDonnell

Vice President of Solutions

Appian is on the road again after a short break following Appian World 2012 and the Gartner Business Process Management (BPM) Summit. If you are just learning about BPM, continuing your education, or wanting to learn about the latest industry trends and network with peers, we have an event for you.

First up is the annual ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum from May 15th to May 17th in Orlando, Florida. As the premier event for insurance technology, business, and networking, you will hear from and meet today’s thought leaders who are defining and shaping the industry’s future. Find us in booth #1117 in the Exhibit Hall, where you will see how Appian BPM can help your organization tap the power of process innovation in the mobile and social age, and learn why we are the leader in Mobile BPM. In the mean time, check out insurance solutions and customers who are using Appian BPM to make their business more competitive, more agile, and more intelligent.

Want to learn more about mobile for the enterprise? Join us at the Mobile Government Implementation Strategies Seminar on May 16th in Washington, District of Columbia (DC). Learn how Federal agencies implement bring-your-own device (BYOD) and other mobility strategies while meeting technical challenges, ensuring data and network security. Hear from Appian’s VP of Federal and other executives on a “Making the Most of Mobility Technology for Your Agency” panel discussion at this free event. Appian delivers government solutions on a flexible platform that’s also cloud and mobile enabled. Learn how over 35 Federal agencies are using Appian BPM, including the US Army, FDA, FEMA, and more.

Can’t make it to Florida or DC next week? Register for the “Modern BPM for Process Innovation” webinar on May 17^th. Find out how your organization can leverage BPM, cloud technology, social collaboration, and mobility to drive performance and success. Start your journey to become an agile organization that can respond quickly to change and gain competitive advantage in the marketplace.

We are also planning to roll out the Tips and Tricks Webinar series for our customers and partners who want to take their BPM skills and projects to the next level. Stay tuned for announcement and updates on the Appian Forum.

Cindy Cheng, Director, Product Marketing

This tweet almost says it all:

We’re hiring! Looking for a smart, self-motivated person. Expertise in middleware and enterprise integration (you know the keywords: web services, BPEL, etc.) is a must. You should also be quite savvy with hardware (network, storage, memory, etc.) and excited in high-end engineered systems such as Exalogic and Exadata (we have some cool toys to play with at Oracle!). You can dive deep in technology topics and are not afraid of being hands-on, yet you are also at ease on stage at conferences and in front of a C-level audience. Of course you should also be a cool person to work with – we have a great team and we want to ensure it stays that way!

Important detail: this individual contributor position is to be filled at Oracle HQ in Redwood Shores, California. If you feel that your qualification is such that it trumps the location requirement feel free to contact me anyway…

Check the position on http://irecruitment.oracle.com (search for IRC1793800), upload your resume and DM me on Twitter (@demed) with a link to your Linkedin profile if you are interested (absolutely no recruiter – candidates only).

CBTS is currently seeking 2 SOA testers for a client in… for an experienced SOA Tester. This tester will provide support in developing SOA/integration interface…
From CBTS – 08 May 2012 19:36:41 GMT
– View all Blue Ash jobs

I’m the father of two young boys. It’s clear to me that the more Charlie and Henry learn to share, the better it is for everybody. Their play is more rewarding. They learn from each other. I don’t have to buy them two of everything.

Federal CIO Steven Van Roekel wants federal agency CIOs to embrace precisely that same lesson. Earlier this month, he announced finalization of the Federal IT Shared Services Strategy. This is big news, and BPM software can play a big role in helping government IT become “good sharers.”

The finalization of this strategy gives new directives (and new powers) to government CIOs to find new ways to leverage existing IT assets and programs across agencies. The essence of the goal, in Van Roekel’s words, is “to root out waste and duplication across the Federal IT portfolio.”

An IT shared service is defined as “an information technology function that is provided for consumption by multiple organizations within or between Federal Agencies.” There are three general categories: commodity, support, and mission.

CIOs have been directed to focus on commodity IT services first. This includes things like acquisition and identity/access management. Appian has government solution frameworks already available in both these areas (and others as well) that accelerate solution deployment while allowing easy configuration to fit the unique needs of individual agencies.

Even in the absence of pre-built frameworks, Appian offers a far-superior approach to that of packaged applications in establishing cross-agency services. For starters, Appian offers secure, fully functional deployment in the cloud (with easy migration on premise as needed), which is a key enabler of effective service sharing. In addition, Appian’s “configure, don’t code” approach gives agencies much greater flexibility in adapting the software as their needs evolve over time. For more on this, read our “Don’t License Another Software Application Until You Read This!” white paper.

Federal CIOs are required to act quickly on the IT Shared Services Strategy. By the end of August, each agency must submit an enterprise roadmap showing their plan to consolidate commodity IT services. As they start looking at this closely, the challenges associated with supporting multiple customers for the same service will emerge. Commercial shared services organizations and business process outsourcing companies have already encountered this in spades. Read “The Five Characteristics of Highly Successful BPM Deployments in Shared Services and BPO” for some proven best practices.

It’s always interesting to reflect on how childhood lessons like “learn to share” continue to ripple through our adult and professional lives. Now if only BPM could automate the “clean up your room” process…

-Ben Farrell, Director, Corporate Communications

It has been a few weeks since my last post. Why, well I have been busy promoting my BizTalk Server 2010 Cookbook, which was published last month. I recommend you to buy a copy (eBook and/or printed version) if you haven’t done so already. A few weeks ago, just before the book was published, I had a conversation through email with Sriram, the person who as a BizTalk community member I like to bring to the foreground now. He has recently been awarded Microsoft Community Contributor. Well done and here is his story.

Sriram Chidambaram Narayanan is 27 years old professional from Chennai located in the southern part of India (State: TamilNadu). He works as a Senior Application Architect for Computer Sciences Corporation(CSC) in Bangalore. Sriram was at Unum for 14 months in the United States and returned back to India a couple of months ago.

Sriram has a total of 6 years of BizTalk experience.He started his career with developing and gradually evolved to a role where he is designing and architecting integration solutions. During his career he started with experimenting and creating connections with BizTalk Server to different applications. More recently his interest shifted towards learning the concepts and technology behind the ESB toolkit and Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus (now renamed to Service Bus Connect). These are currently the two areas where he is focusing on.

Sriram loves the BizTalk product because I quoted:

• its a fresh approach for designing Business flows and connections through built in shapes and configurations instead of the traditional 20000 lines of code
• provides a clear view on everything that flows through the system via various tracking options and monitoring tools
• it has and is maturing as a product with various enhancements and accelerators since the time I started working on the 2004 version
• it also has many interesting concepts, designs and logics that one has to think on opposed to just configure type products
• it never stopped challenging me and I never stopped dissolving them to feel the exhilaration.

His enthusiasm for the product shows through his contributions on the BizTalk forums (profile) and other channels. Whenever Sriram gets time outside of his regular work he will spend time on the forums. He enjoys doing this as it introduces him to different issues and solutions, which otherwise would take lots of time for him to personally explore. He also maintains a blog, where he shares his experience and knowledge or some times writes a post on issue resolutions that might help others. He also contributes to Codit’s(http://www.codit.eu) technical blogs. To the readers of his personal blog he would like to say:

“Show love, keep learning, be strong and don’t compromise on your goals.Keep a rockin’ attitude!”

Beside blogging Sriram has recently written his first article for the TechNet Wiki.So we have another BizTalk community member as contributor.

In India, cricket is a religion and Sriram is a great fan of Sachin Tendulkar. He support his home team, Chennai Super Kings and enjoys playing tennis once and a while. Besides sports Sriram enjoys listening to music especially to A. R. Rahman. Furthermore he regularly visits his family every weekend and now and then he spends some time with his friends.

Finally Sriram has a word for me and this blog:

“Steef is a great inspiration to all new BizTalk and Integration professionals and his contributions in the forums and TechNet articles are tremendous. I would thank and appreciate Steef for all his contributions and for keeping the ball rolling.Nandri!(Thank you)”

Thanks Sriram for your time and your contributions to forums, your blog and now also the TechNet Wiki.

Part 2 Last time, I wrote about the challenges mobile telcos are facing – how they are in danger of becoming utility bitpipes to the Internet and how some are responding by ensuring subscribers receive high quality, proactive customer service. Having high customer service ambitions is one thing, but how do companies take it further? How do they go beyond…

Agile development and composite applications are a hallmark of SOA these days, but they are not without their difficulties. The push to rapidly deploy composite apps complicates the life of the QA team, whose members must now create test beds to work with a mishmash of services.

Some of these services are complete and in operation, while others are under development. All of them, unfortunately, are usually undergoing versioning.

The open source community has created mock services architectures to deal with this symptom of SOA. Too, vendors have fielded tools to deal with the new paradigm. ITKO (now a CA company) Parasoft, GreenHat (now an IBM company) and Hewlett-Packard Co. now support simulation of services. These are often called “virtualized services” as well.

While there is a certain natural solidity to enterprise back-end systems, the Web, with its constant change, is influencing the need for virtualized testing.

“People need to have an e-commerce experience that is extremely dynamic. Expectations change almost every week,” said Kelly Emo, director, Applications Product Marketing, HP. “This places demand on the developer team, and potentially, on the scalability and elasticity of back-end services.”

Application owners help drive the use of services virtualization tools, she noted, saying, “They see the costs in waiting and the problems that arise with limited testing.”

HP entered the virtualized services fray about a year ago, and has recently updated its HP Service Virtualization offering with support for REST services, now found widely in cloud and Web APIs. Native support is also available with this release for IBM WebSphere MQ services, which has been seeing a lot of demand, she said.

Cloud computing, too, is a driver of the move to virtualized services testing, according to Emo.

This blog entry lists all the Technology and Application Adapters that have been officially certified to work with Oracle Service Bus 11.1.1.6 Release.