Treff LaPlante

A Nov. 30 article in the Business Journal covered some of our experiences with being a company listed on Wikipedia, and with that listing being challenged. I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the lessons we learned and provide some simple advice for those of you who would like your organizations listed on Wikipedia. Wikipedia Moderators Make Hitler Look Like a Hobbyist First, never post your organization on Wikipedia without understanding "the rules" for all such articles. Your page will be speedily deleted, and you will have created a history for yourself of having been deleted. When you move to repost your article, you could be judged antagonistically as "spamming," even though that might not be your intent. The rules of Wikipedia govern a wide range of concepts, from worthiness for the existence of the article all the way to covering the nature of the ... (more)

5GL PaaS

The debate has raged for some time now about the exact definition of a 5GL.  One might argue that there also is still some debate going on about what exactly is a Platform as a Service PaaS.  Throw together two semi-ambiguous industry-specific buzzwords and what do you get?  Well, for all of you cynics out there, the answer is NOT "a great marketing opportunity!" In all seriousness, taken together, the two do represent an ambitious vision of the future; a world where the "non-programmer", i.e. someone who does not have experience "writing code", can quickly create flexible softwar... (more)

Saas-Based Time and Cost Reductions in the Cloud

In the past four weeks I've discussed the benefits of cloud computing and its core components. My goal was to reveal the key value drivers of the cloud so you could better understand and evaluate ROI opportunities. I described two of the three core components of cloud computing,infrastructure and platform, each delivered as a service. But, in the end, your users will not work smarter or more efficiently because of either infrastructure or platforms (save software developers or IT staff); employees will be more effective because of the third core component, software delivered as a... (more)

Disruptive Nature of Cloud Computing and PaaS

Too often, discussions about "cloud computing" are met with skepticism and inside jokes that it is more about marketing than it is about delivering real value.  In his excellent analysis of why Cloud Computing is disruptive, Ric Telford over at IBM disagree's.  He talks about a number of key factors that create a disruptive technology, which he defines as the ability to rapidly displace existing technologies.  He mentions things like ease of use, empowerment and efficiency.  He alludes to dramatic productivity gains and cost reductions, and he uses real examples. I am particular... (more)

The People Cloud Computing Forgot

I’m a big fan of Dana Gardner (Dana Gardner's BriefingsDirect on Ulitzer), and he recently took a stab at discussing how organizational roles and their importance are likely to change with the growing adoption of cloud computing.  Specifically, Dana focuses on the role of the Enterprise Architect, and he correctly assesses their increased prominence in tomorrow’s organizations. While that represents an important incremental change, I see a much more transformative change on the horizon for organizations embracing cloud computing technologies.  Before I tell you what this more ra... (more)