Pattern Finder

Microsoft's Business Scorecard

The New York Times posted an article today with the amusing title, "Microsoft to Enter Market for Business Intelligence."  I mean, what rock has that reporter been hiding under?  Excel is at least 15 years old, SQL Server's been around for a decade, and Analysis Services (formerly OLAP Services) has been around for at least five years.

OK, well, maybe Microsoft has had bits and pieces of BI, but it's certainly no stranger to the market.  It turns out that the article is actually about Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager, a part of Office that will serve as a dashboard containing key performance indicators.

Two of the three analysts quoted in the article have it right: Peter O'Kelly ('Office is becoming a platform') and Andreas Bitterer ('Microsoft isn't taking over BI anytime soon.')  Howard Dresner, who until recently was the BI guru at Gartner (and who actually coined the term "BI") and is now at Hyperion, says, "Excel is part of the problem."  No, it's actually BI vendors not working well with Excel that's the problem.

Actually, the longterm impact of this announcement is twofold.  First, Microsoft owns the business desktop.  Microsoft Office is where business people live.  The Business Scorecard will continue that tradition.  And frankly, the smarter BI players have figured this out.  For example, Business Objects XI works very well with Office.  Three and four years ago,  BI players would sputter (just like Howard) that Excel was a toy, a disservice to BI, and all would be well if users just used their user interface.  The smart vendors finally realized users weren't about to change, and now position their software as a data server to Excel.

Besides keeping a stranglehold on the BI user interface, the Business Scorecard will be the first introduction that many small and mid-sized businesses have to BI.  And this is the more insidious result.  As people like BO, Cognos, and SAS have pretty much infiltrated the Fortune 1000, they are looking for greener pastures, and the SMB segment is one of them.  So the takeaway here is not so much that Microsoft will take business away from the big BI players, but that it will prevent them from moving into a market that they covet for future growth.

IE Summit, Day 1

Well, Michael Lewis (author of Liar's Poker and Moneyball) gave the keynote address and it was terrific.  My experience is that usually some sports figure or business leader gives a sort of rah rah speech at these things, and while inspiring, typically aren't very relevant to the conference.  What made Lewis' speech interesting was he talked about how statistics are revolutioninzing how baseball teams are run, the theme of Moneyball.

To an audience of BI folks, this was a really interesting cultural study, in that it replicated what many of us see at work.  The stats believers vs. the gut feel folks, the fact that you need to measure the correct things, not just the things you can measure.

He likened the shift to the culture clash he witnessed on Wall Street during the 80s, when the stats guys challenged the gut feel guys.  He told a wonderful story about Donny Green, the prototypical gut feel guy.  Just before Christmas he noticed one of the geek guys leaving, while Donny was working away.  "Hey, where are you going?" quizzed Donny.  "Oh, taking a flight home so I can be with the family at Christmas."  "Well, in that case," says Donny, "here's $20 for you to put on crash insurance for your flight in my name."  "Why do you want to do that?" asked the geek.  "I feel lucky," says Donny.

Off to IE Summit

Well, I'm off to give a talk at IE Summit on Web and search analytics.  I drive down to Norwalk, CT tonight and then speak tomorrow afternoon.

Michael Lewis (Liar's Poker, Moneyball) is giving the keynote, which should be interesting.
Assuming I have time (and an Internet connection in my hotel room), I'll try to write down some takeaways from the conference.

On-Demand vs. Software -- Avoiding Feature Tax

I had a very interesting conversation with Matt Roche, one of the co-founders of Offermatica, at the end of last week.  He was briefing me on the company's funding, but happily we got off on one of those tangents that folks who've been in the business for awhile sometimes get into.

I pointed out that ASPs have a tremendous advantage over software vendors, in that (1) they get to release their software incrementally, rather than every 6 to 9 months, and (2) they can observe how their users actually consume the software, rather than depend on anecdotes that trickle in (hopefully).

Based on the speed in which he agreed, he had clearly been thinking on the same lines, and went on to point out, "Actually, we de-install about a feature a year."  When I did the "Huh?" reply, he said, "Every feature in software generates some kind of tax -- whether its disk space, or CPU cycles, or education time on the part of the users.  Every once and awhile we yank out a feature, because while we thought it was great, our users didn't -- they just don't use it.  Keeping such a feature around just adds to the system bloat -- so we clean it up."

I thought that was a very perceptive comment, and points to how the on-demand model creates a conversation between user and vendor that has been missing from the software model.  I've been a product manager of both software and on-demand solutions, and it's a very different way of working.  As I've pointed out before, everyone seems to fasten on the financial (rent vs. buy) and location (outsourced vs. in house) aspects of on-demand solutions, but they're just the most obvious differences.  A much more far-reaching difference is the ability to hone the software based on customer usage -- an ability which has eluded software for much of its life.

KPL - Enough to Make You Feel Young Again

I stumbled across KPL yesterday -- that is, Kids Programming Language -- and it's "keen," as a kid who grew up in the Fifties would say.  You can find it at www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com, where it's free download.

From my viewpoint, it's a lightweight version of Visual Basic.  You can't access Windows APIs, and you can't read or write to files, but you can certainly do interesting things on the screen.  The creators were looking for a simple-to-write language that would serve as a nice introduction to programming for kids -- that is, they could quickly see results from their efforts, which in the long run would entice them to learn the more arcane parts of programming.

Consequently, the language has the concept of Sprites -- online pictures that you can move around the screen and use to create games.

My 11-year-old daughter has already decided on some changes that she want to make to one of the enclosed games (keep score, make the spaceship go backwards), and is eager to get started.  So if you have a child in the early teens who may be interested in programming, KPL is a nice way to get his or her feet wet.