Five Things You Need to Know About DevOps from a Director of Engineering

April 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment
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I asked John Skovron, Senior Director of Engineering at TIBCO, five thought-provoking, high-level questions about how DevOps and Platform as a Service (PaaS) can benefit 21st-century enterprises right now and in the long term.

Steve Leung – What are some of the most common challenges for Development & Operations teams today?

John Skovron – The common challenge is definitely the accelerating pace of software development and deployment. Agile methods have made it possible to design and implement better software much faster. With an “as-a-service” approach, whether for private or public consumption, delivery of new features and versions can accelerate from once-a-quarter to once-a-week, once-a-day, and even multiple deployments a day, utilizing A/B testing or other rapid validation techniques.

Steve Leung – Who should be driving the changes needed, business or IT? What is the role of the CIO in this transformation?

John Skovron – IT should drive the changes – first of all, by aligning IT as closely as possible with the business. And certainly, the CIO should be leading the charge – any CIO who is satisfied with a status quo of sludgy, slow deployments should be brushing up his resume, because he’s going to be looking for a new job soon. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Cloud, Cloud Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Call of Duty Gamifies Data Analytics for Digital Natives

March 16, 2013 by 1 Comment
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Leveling Up in the Enterprise
This post is part of a series discussing lessons gleaned from the video game industry. Catch the next part on Journey and Customer Experience next Saturday.

There’s plenty of talk on how the newer generations are “digital natives” and uniquely suited to transform business, and more specifically IT, through total adoption of mobile, social, local, and always-on connectivity. However, it can be difficult to conceptualize this predicted transformation when all you see is a bunch of teenagers who use Facebook too much. Sure, digital natives demonstrate knowledge on liking a status and using emoticons, but how will that translate to skills integral to the future of technology and business?

Analytics Will Drive 21st-Century Innovation

One answer is analytics. With Big Data and the push for better analytics exploding, companies are scrambling to hire employees who can makes sense and drive value from analytics tools. Analytics skills aren’t taught in school besides the highest levels of business education; digital natives get their in-depth analytic education from consumer software, specifically Xbox Live. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Analytics and Optimization Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Just How Random is Your Workplace?

February 12, 2013 by 1 Comment
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Companies put a great deal of focus on goals and strategies and, often, less effort goes into the tactics and guidance for how work actually gets done. In reality, there’s a personal aspect to what we do that should be understood so that it gets done right and quickly. If you’ve seen the viral video for the Harlem Shake, it illustrates what too many companies look like under their corporate covers.

Doing the Harlem Shake

Enjoy this short video (you may want some sound):

Doing your own thing

What makes the video so entertaining is that everyone is doing his or her own thing. Water cooler guy? …is that guy punching a giraffe? Some have great moves while others look like dancing isn’t really their “thing.” Just like how the company logo can be the only commonality, the beat is in this video is the only thing uniting this group of people. [Read more...]

Filed Under: BPM, Nimbus Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

You Are Micromanaging and Need to Stop

February 11, 2013 by 2 Comments
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Business Process Improvement

Continuous improvement, consistency and collaboration are the ways process is managed effectively. Without it, you’re just a micromanager.

Making it Better

Business Process Management (BPM) is absolutely necessary to any company, but what’s the point if you don’t use what you know to improve? There also needs to Business Process Improvement that takes managed processes and makes it better. There is always room for improvement. Everything can get better and with the right tools, help and support, anyone and anything can improve.

Strengthening Weakest Links

Employees may or may not have the same skill-set, but they should all have a firm understanding of their position and role within the company. It is vital to ensure that business processes are handled in a way all employees easily understand. Work becomes easier, faster, and more rewarding when all your company’s employees know they are following the right process, at the right time. [Read more...]

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Top TIBCO Architects Answer Your Toughest Questions #AskTIBCO

February 7, 2013 by 2 Comments
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Screen Shot 2013-02-07 at 12.34.01 PMWe live in a world where information is flowing fast, and catching the attention of the people in the know has never been harder. As much as the Web is democratic, it isn’t the easiest way to fight through the noise and get your most important questions answered.

TIBCO is offering exactly this opportunity. Today we launch #AskTIBCO, a chance for you to invest a small effort and have a shot at being the featured question for our response to your curiosity.

February is integration month and we’ll be using that opportunity to choose the best questions about integration. We’ll answer those questions with a video response from our top people, including TIBCO’s top architect, Paul Brown.

How it works

Tweet us your questionWe want you to send us your burning architecture questions by tweeting them to us at @TIBCO using the #AskTIBCO hashtag and we will post a video response to the best questions in the TIBCOmmunity online.

Remember, you have to submit your questions via Twitter.

We look forward to hearing from you and engaging in great conversations around your most important questions.

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A Look Back: Vivek Ranadivé and TIBCO

January 25, 2013 by 3 Comments
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At the age of 17, with just two months worth of money in his pocket, Vivek Ranadivé left his home in Bombay for the United States. He dreamed of attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) after watching a documentary in India years earlier. He was able to earn a bachelor’s and master’s degree from MIT in Electrical Engineering, and later an MBA from Harvard.

Once out of school, Ranadivé decided to start his own information technology company. Disappointed in the inefficiencies in software development as compared to hardware, he developed technology that would deliver electronic information to users in real time through a centralized bus. He became “Mr. Real Time” when he first built “The Information Bus,” or TIB, a software version of the staple computer bus concept for hardware.

With a prototype TIB under construction, Ranadivé put his business degree from Harvard to use and sought start-up capital in northern California. He received seed capital from Teknekron Corp in 1985 and Teknekron Software Systems Inc. (TSS) was born. Ranadivé turned to faculty at MIT and hired talented staff from nearby Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.

TSS found initial success creating software infrastructure that integrated and delivered market data to trading rooms at Goldman Sachs and then many large banks and other financial organizations. Teknekron created the “trading floor of the future,” eventually digitizing all of Wall Street.

For more on Vivek Ranadivé and how vision became a reality, watch this short YouTube biography.

Filed Under: Real Time With Vivek Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Like the Wright Brothers, TIBCO Helps Scandinavian Airlines Innovate in Air Travel

December 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment
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Orville and Wilbur Wright are credited with developing and building the first successful airplane. While they were not the first to build and fly an experimental aircraft, in 1903 they were the first to innovate the revolutionary concept of fixed-wing flight. Based on this fundamental shift in essential airplane architecture, we now have airplanes that travel the globe faster and better than anyone could have ever imagined. Every airline has them to thank for their business success, and Scandinavian Airlines understands the importance of safe and comfortable travel. Scandinavian Airlines is the fourth-largest airline in Europe and transports over 23 million passengers to 92 destinations in 33 countries each year.

The airline industry might appreciate the Wright brothers for their innovations in flying, but many other processes are critical to commercial airlines including customers and passenger service. As in most industries, unseen internal processes often get taken for granted, yet are just as important. Scandinavian Airlines is known as a technology innovator within the industry. They began migrating to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure in 2002 and now have approximately 60 to 70 services in use internally and externally. Just as every airline and pilot can be grateful for the Wright brothers, Scandinavian Airlines also appreciates the unseen help and support TIBCO provides to the company. TIBCO’s platform-neutral approach to SOA is helping the airline manage services across heterogeneous platforms – a critical success factor in their environment. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Automation, Integration, SOA, Transform, Transportation and Logistics Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Innovation is Child’s Play for UK Toy Giant Hamleys

November 28, 2012 by 2 Comments
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When does innovation start? At what age does the inspiration to innovate begin? From the early ages of childhood, kids think of new games and ways to have fun each day. Imagination and creativity is nothing new and it is not reserved for any particular age. When children play with toys, they imagine an entire new world from the moments they have the toy in their hands. A toy store is like a warehouse for imagination where potential childhood dreams can be played out with the right toy. This creativity and innovation start very young, and is carried on into adulthood to create some of the most successful businesses today. Hamleys, an internationally recognized toy retailer, knows the importance of creativity and imagination to children.  The flagship store in London has become more than a retail shop, but a tourist attraction itself due to the imaginative wonders inside. The retailer receives over five million visitors a year, of all ages. Hamleys is not just this seven-story wonder world in London, as their stores span eight countries, creating a global network that promotes imagination and innovation. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Industries, Retail Tagged With: , , , , , ,

What Can’t You Do Without? TIBCO: The Easy Button For Business

November 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment
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What things can’t you do without? Other than the necessities, what is important to your everyday life? Some people would say television, Internet, an iPod, or their cell phone. In today’s world, we all have certain things that we use daily to make our lives easier. Many of the things that we value so much today did not even exist 50 years ago, but that is the power of innovation. We have new tools to handle our problems more quickly and make life easier. In many ways, technology has become the easy button for life. Just as much as we often look for an easy button in our daily lives, companies sometimes need an easy button for business.

Founded in 1939, Colonial Life & Accident Insurance Company is a market leader in providing benefit solutions to customers. They pride themselves in excellence in communications, enrollments, service, and services that can help employers and employees. Colonial Life is a leading national provider of voluntary benefits to over 70,000 companies faced the challenge of a large volume of paperwork, modifying payment methods, altering billing frequencies, and other workflow issues. At Colonial Life, there was no easy button to prioritize work in their manual environment. That is, there was no easy button until Colonial Life turned to TIBCO. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Automation, Healthcare Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

TIBCO Innovates in Real Time for Global Carrier CargoSmart

November 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment
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“Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time.” Bill Gates uttered these words and they could not be truer for TIBCO. The famously successful businessman is no stranger to innovation, and today there is great promise for new and exciting technological advancements. As a leading provider of infrastructure software, TIBCO knows it is important to innovate and help other companies innovate to become event-enabled enterprises. One such company is Hong Kong-based CargoSmart Limited, an ocean-carrier transportation portal that allows customers to master the challenging “end-to-end” shipping process that requires multi-carrier shipping to connect seller and buyer.

Gates’ words are not just inspiring, but an idea CargoSmart realizes is vital to the success in the transportation industry. Not only does innovation promise to bring “so much to so many” in this day and age, but CargoSmart has to ensure that their shipments are being received by “so many” of their customers in a timely and efficient manner. CargoSmart uses a TIBCO-based platform to create products and respond to events in real time. Also, CargoSmart built a collaborative platform for the company on tibbr – TIBCO’s social computing tool for the workplace. Because of TIBCO’s help, CargoSmart has the ability to cut transportation management costs, automate and streamline operations, and reduce the risk of late or mismanaged shipments. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Event Processing, Transportation and Logistics, Two-Second Advantage Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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