| ------------------------------------- BrainStorm Bulletin e-newsletter of BrainStorm Group October 31, 2002 ------------------------------------- ====================================================
-- INTRODUCTION
==================================================== BrainStorm San Francisco is right around the corner! Our San Francisco event includes the following BrainStorm and Giga co-produced events: * eBusiness Integration
Conference (November 18-20) For additional information on these events including complete agendas, co-sponsor information and the Project Rescue Seminar hosted by Sapient. For this issue I interviewed Conference Co-Chairman William Ulrich and Phil Wilkerson, Director of IT at The Home Depot. William Ulrich gave me an overview of the eBusiness Integration Conference. His particular bailiwick is legacy transformation, and while this has been a dry and technical topic in the past, it is very hot right now. Phil Wilkerson is spearheading The Home Depot's integration efforts, and he told me the key for any business to be successful is to have an IT infrastructure that is integrated and so robust that adding new functionality becomes a plug-and-play operation. This is what Wal-Mart and The Home Depot are doing and it‘s working (they are currently number one and two in retail sales). The key to their success is transforming legacy data and systems. Phil told me that most companies already have what they need: the legacy data and systems, various kinds of middleware and the business processes. All it takes is a dedicated integration effort to make them work together, and this can be done easier now than ever before. The retail industry is spending a lot of money on IT now; they have to in order to stay competitive. The same lessons are true across all industries and vertical markets. Read about Phil's presentation below, and check out the overview of the entire conference. We have a lot to offer in San Francisco - make plans to join us for all the latest information on eBusiness integration, business process integration, the benefits of outsourcing, and the opportunity for one-on-one meetings with leading experts and analysts in the industry.
Jon Huntress |
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================================================= Register today to schedule your One-on-One Meetings*!
To register for the San Francisco eBusiness Integration Conference, November
18-20 |
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================================================= FROM THE EXPERTS: Interview with William Ulrich, San Francisco eBusiness Integration Conference Overview by Jon Huntress ================================================ William Ulrich, Conference Co-Chairman and President, Tactical Strategy Group, outlined BrainStorm’s San Francisco conference for this issue of the Bulletin. The first day, Monday November 18, will be an all-keynote Executive Day. The opening keynote will be given by Ken Vollmer, Research Director, Integration Strategies for Giga Information Group on “Integration Trends and Forecasts”, with the latest information on what is happening in the integration space and who the players are. This will be followed by the first case study, given by Phil Wilkerson, Director of IS at The Home Depot, on “Building Collaborative Relationships for the 21st Century Retailer.” I talked with Phil this week and he described his San Francisco presentation. Phil’s interview can be found later in this issue of our newsletter. Following Phil’s case study there will be a very interesting presentation by Robert Morse, Vice President of Oak Hill Capital Management on “The Manager as Investor: Evaluating IT Investments Using Risk-Adjusted Returns.” Morse will present a method for determining the risks involved in IT strategic investment decisions. Fear currently dominates investment thinking, and dropping millions on an IT initiative is one of the scariest things to contemplate for any executive. Morse will be followed by Jim Highsmith, author of Agile Software Development Ecosystems. His presentation, “Why Integration Projects Need Agile Project Management,” will cover why agile management is so important right now, as integration projects span across more parts of the organization. The Executive Luncheon follows Jim’s presentation, and is sponsored by Oracle with a keynote from Thomas Kurian, Sr. Vice President, Oracle 9i Application Server, titled, “Can Your Integration Strategy Improve Your Bottom Line?” Kurian will explain how to link integration back to real-world benefits. After lunch, the Executive Day continues with a presentation on “The Future of Distributed Computing” by Norbert Mikula, Director of Web Services Technology for Intel Labs. Following this, Ian Hayes, President of Clarity Consulting and author of the new book, Just Enough Wireless Computing, will cover “A Survey of Wireless Applications, What are Companies Really Doing?” Ian will have some excellent insights to doing risk and cost-based analysis for wireless initiatives. Lorraine Cosgrove, Research Editor, CXO Media, the publishers of CIO and CSO Magazines, will give present on ”Integration Hits the Executive Suite.” The closing keynote will be presented by Will Ozier, President of the Integrated Risk Management Group. In his talk, “The Three R’s of Information Risk Management: Risk Metrics, Risk Measurement and ROI,” he will discuss the increased security risks we encounter as we integrate more systems and processes. At the end of Monday afternoon there will be an Expert’s Panel on “Critical Success Factors in eBusiness Integration,” moderated by William Ulrich. Panel members will be the various presenters from throughout the executive day. Following the panel, everyone will adjourn to the evening reception on the Solutions Showcase. William Ulrich will give the opening keynote on Tuesday morning titled, “Legacy Transformation: Leveraging Information Assets to Deliver Business Value.” This is a hot topic today because adapting legacy systems to newer technologies can save time and money. Oftentimes, it is far easier to leverage your existing systems than to build new ones. William will talk about the challenges and risks of integrating older architectures, which is a more invasive approach to integration. After William’s morning talk, the conference will split into three tracks, a BPM track, an eAI/Legacy Track, and a Web Services Track. The Business Process Management Track is chaired by Ken Vollmer of Giga Information Group. His talk is titled “Business Process Management: A Key Component of Effective eBusiness Strategy.” This will be followed by a case study on “Global Logistics with B2Bi at BridgePoint” given by Stephanie Miles, General Manager of BridgePoint. The case study is hosted by Sun Microsystems. A panel on BPI/BPM Solutions, moderated by Ken Vollmer, will end the BPM morning track. The second track, held concurrently, will be the eAI/Legacy Integration Technical Track chaired by William Ulrich. The keynote will be given by Cathy Hotka of the National Retail Federation called “Data Integration Issues in the Retail Industry: Driving Technical Innovation.” Ken Harris, Sr. Vice President and CIO for Gap Inc., will join Cathy in giving this presentation. This will be followed by a case study on “Transitioning the Marine Corp to an eBusiness” presented by David Ferris, Group Director of Information Systems and Infrastructure for the USMC and hosted by Sapient. The Marines are doing some cutting-edge integration work, and this will be a fascinating presentation. The morning will end with a panel on eAI and Middleware Solutions hosted by William Ulrich. The third track is chaired by Uttam Narsu, a VP at Giga Information Group, who will give the keynote on “The Current State of Web Services.” This is followed by a case study, “Web Services via Standards-based Business Registries” by Patricia Caputo, Technical Director, Southwestern Bell Communications. Ending the morning will be a panel, “Where’s the Beef in Web Services?” moderated by Uttam Narsu. After a luncheon followed by dessert and coffee on the Solutions Showcase, the three tracks will continue in the afternoon. The Business Process track will turn technical and be chaired by Pimm Fox, Contributing Columnist at Computerworld. The keynote “Where Application Development Meets BPM,” will be given by John Rymer, Research Vice President of Giga Information Group. This talk will tie the development model for applications with BPI and describe how the two fit together. Next will be a case study by Steve Dunaway, the Director of Systems Development at DSI Technology Escrow Services and hosted by Metastorm. After this will be another case study hosted by Oracle and presented by Tania Datti, CTO of Pakprint, titled, “The Paper, Pulp and Converting Industry Internet Hub.” On the way to the paperless office, did you ever wonder what the paper companies are doing? This case study will illuminate us. The eAI/Legacy track turns to strategy for the afternoon and is hosted by Phil Murphy, a Director at Giga Information Group. He will give the keynote on “Maximizing Investments in Legacy Applications.” This will be followed by a case study on “Building and Deploying an eBusiness Legacy Systems Strategy.” The track will finish with a panel on “Successfully Leveraging Legacy Systems,” moderated by Phil Murphy. The Web Services Track will also turn to strategy and will be chaired by JP Morgenthal, author of Enterprise Application Integration with XML and Java. He will deliver the track keynote, “The Many Flavors of Web Services.” This will be followed by a presentation by Tyler McDaniel, Independent Analyst and Consultant of Clearview Analysis and Consulting. This track will end with a panel on “Improving Integration ROI through Web Services,” hosted by JP Morgenthal. At the conclusion of the panels, everyone will adjourn to the Solutions Showcase for the Evening Reception. Day Three will be all keynotes, beginning with the opening keynote by Tom Dwyer, VP of the Aberdeen Group, on “Creating Next Generation Enterprises.” This talk will emphasize the importance of architecture and strategic perspective in IT integration strategy and development. Following this, David Marco, author of Building the Meta Data Repository, will speak on “Building and Managing the Meta Data Repository.” Greg McMillan, Enterprise Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing Manager for Ford Motor Company will give a highly informative case study on “Legacy Data Warehouse Integration- Back to Basics.” Find out how Ford is getting more intelligence out of their data warehouse and how this is helping them build better cars. Todd Hollowell, VP of Advisory Services for Doculabs will give the closing keynote of the conference on “Exploring the B2Bi Frontier.” Finally, following the conference there is a post conference seminar hosted by Sapient and given by Carl Gilbert, Director of Program Management for Sapient. The seminar is titled, “Project Rescue: Transforming a Troubled IT Project into a Success.” Attendance to the post conference seminar is complimentary for all full-conference attendees. A tremendous amount of
information will be covered at the BrainStorm San Francisco conference. In
addition to all of the above, you will have the opportunity to hold
One-on-One meetings with the presenters (booked on a first-come basis).
Make plans to be with us in San Francisco November 18-20.
====================================== Intelligent Enterprise is the only IT publication focused exclusively on the most critical issue in business today--unlocking the value of collected information for competitive advantage. Intelligent Enterprise shows high level technology professionals how to plan, deploy, and manage the strategic applications their companies depend on to improve decision making, optimize business performance, and maximize the value of customer relationships. For a FREE
subscription, logo onto:
www.IntelligentEnterprise.com today! Phil Wilkerson, Director of Information Services at the $53B building supply retailer, will be giving a presentation at the eBusiness Integration Conference on November 18. He will explain how The Home Depot is integrating its systems and what the 21st century retailer needs to do in order to compete. I talked to Phil about his presentation. He emphasized how important integration and a good technical infrastructure are. This can clearly be seen in Wal-Mart’s success, whose technical infrastructure is superb. Eight years ago they sold no groceries, and now they are the number one retail grocery chain. Their overall integration and technical infrastructure allows them to repeat their success with different products and services. Phil went on to say that “because Wal-Mart has integration and logistics down and they understand data, they can directly ship to their stores and are able to make different plays as they want. Wal-Mart has shown again how consistent processes, metrics, and systems bring value to the bottom-line, and this helps the top line to grow.” At The Home Depot, “We want to send a message to our customers and the market in general that we understand the home improvement market and we are going to continue to grow and provide lower costs and deliver more value to our customers.” Phil said that the overall goal is to build a repeatable infrastructure framework that allows the exchange of information among internal associates, partners, suppliers, and eventually, the customer. The main factors for success are strong leadership and good technology providers. Phil said you also need a well-disciplined, executable plan for implementing these initiatives, but the architecture is critical. He said, “We need to follow the disciplines that we all know and do them consistently - we need to be able to run, kick, catch and hit consistently all on the same day. The companies that are surviving in this market are those that have the back-end capability.” Phil also emphasized the endless cast potential for new opportunities. The great thing is that most companies already have what they need -- data modeling, middleware in various forms, and repeatable business processes. Cathy Hotka of the National Retail Federation told me the same thing in New York. She said that nationally (contrary to what is happening with most other industries) retail is investing heavily in IT. The hard lessons of being behind in this area have become painfully clear to management. If you have a robust, integrated technical infrastructure, you can do just about anything; and without it you will always be playing catch-up. The Home Depot is investing heavily in their technical infrastructure. The Home Depot contracted with HP/Compaq for 40,000 new PCs and with IBM for a 60TB data warehouse which will be used initially to automate HR functions for their 300,000+ employees, then will be used for getting near-real-time sales transactional data. The Home Depot also opened up two buying houses in China in the last few weeks, which will allow them to hook their Chinese suppliers into their network and reduce costs. This requires a lot of back-end integration according to Phil. One of the big challenges to integration is the development of a common vernacular, such as the definition of what a customer is, what a vendor is, and achieving a consistency across the entire business. Common standards for all the outlets are necessary. There are three important steps that need to be taken. The first is to decide what needs to be integrated, second, the decision can be made about what the tasks are. The most difficult step is the third, which is how the work is organized across the company. Phil says that this involves implementing process management across the enterprise, which can be difficult because a business or division is seldom run as a science, but more as an art. The Home Depot is starting to implement Web Services as a part of its information delivery, bolting on top of its EAI framework. Web Services, at present, are being used to enhance the customer experience, such as locating out-of-stock products at nearby retail locations as well as other customer-oriented services. As the technology matures, Web Services will eventually make its way down to the business process and business rules levels. The Home Depot is also using Web Services for applications to talk to common frameworks such as portals. The nice thing about deploying Web Services, Phil told me, is that they have the infrastructure in place now to develop and enhance the customer experience in any direction they choose. Come and listen to Phil
Wilkerson and many other top IT professionals, authors and analysts in San
Francisco, November 18-20. When you register, remember to book your
One-on-One sessions with presenters.
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