Michael Krigsman, who’s blog I subscribe to, posted an interview with the SAP CTO, Vishal Sikka who is quoted:

Lines of business know the what and IT knows the how.

Mr. Sikka does not stop there and proceeds to talk about how this relationship should be managed. However this thought is very commonly used as a dogma which I would like to challenge.

If this is true, how can we explain all the projects delivered out of time and budget constrains, all the unsatisfied business communities, and low rates of adoption we read about in Michael’s blog? Perhaps these lines of business do not tell what they need? Or perhaps IT doesn’t have the know-how to install enterprise software or to maintain infrastructure?Â

I would like to propose that the above mentioned wisdom falls into a category of truthiness and the lines of business do not know exactly what their requirements are, as well as IT often does not have the know-how and political clout to provide thought leadership required to articulate and negotiate these requirements. The what is often in a realm of notions and wishes, which are impossible to act upon. The requirements are expressed in a form of functions and features which have very remote connections to the economic reasoning for the project. The lack of this knowledge is greatly discounted and misunderstood. The "what" needs to be figured out, challenged and probed until a set of specific business requirements is distilled which communicates why it is economically necessary to invest and how the change adoption will be managed. Perhaps lines of business have to accept ownership, responsibility and leadership for success or failure of the organizational transformation initiatives rather than "outsourcing" this responsibility to IT.

The poor little giant had a lot of negative press lately. Gartner announced that Vista operating system is so “overweight” that it threatens to sink the company and technology and stock market pundits continue to speculate whether it can survive without infusion of Yahoo’s creativity.  Yet today the company about to release the quarterly results which likely to exceed analysts expectations.

It takes a distance of five nautical miles for a large cargo ship, moving at a low speed, to stop or to complete a maneuver, and Microsoft is a very large “ship” and there are indicators that it started to turn. There are reports that it’s Dynamics Enterprise Software is met with considerable enthusiasm by resellers and customers as the company entered aggressively in on-demand marketplace to give the pioneers of that business model a run for their money. But even more impotently, the thought leadership in Microsoft started to change noticeably.   

Perhaps the rumors of Microsoft’s imminent demise are a little premature.

  Dennis Howlett, who wrote a number of enthusiastic posts about promise and proliferation of social software in his blogs, Irregular Enterprise and Accman Pro, seem to start loosing his enthusiasm for it’s value for an enterprise. At least it is my understanding of his post.

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Joshua Greenbaum came up with an excellent analysis of the upcoming battle of these CRM giants in his Enterprise Anti-matter blog. A particularly interesting point he makes is

I’ve always contended that CRM on demand in general, with all due respect to all its adherents, is more of a commodity play than a strategic value play, particularly for the vast majority of deployments, which are mostly standalone and largely serving a contact management, sales force automation need.

I couldn’t agree more. I also always felt that the on-demand offering of "so-called" CRM, is short changing true organizational transformation opportunities.  It is a fact that the adoption experience of Salesforce.com is legendary, but it is because it does not challenge any status quo and attempts to promote change in business practices and as such it also does not produce significant ROI.

Whatever I have said before about “social enterprise” zealots, I need to take back now. They obviously saw something these, which many practitioners, like myself, have difficulties to apply to corporate IT initiatives. The Economist published a very interesting article this week “Disgruntled small investors in Canada flex their muscles” that is well worth reading, which describes how asymmetric relationship between large number of small customers and large institutions can unexpectedly be challenged by use of social networking and other tools of Web 2.0.

Following the example of their children and grandchildren, some small investors formed a group on Facebook, a social-networking site, to trade information, provide mutual support and plot strategy. Brian Hunter, the group administrator, says the site turned out to be an “amazing tool”. People who would never have met in real life, from pig farmers and retired loggers to MBA students and pastors, created a formidable interest group.

Campaigners were able to ensure that investors armed with information attended cross-country meetings held in late March and early April by the backers of the restructuring deal. “We had 300 raging grannies show up in Vancouver,” says Mr Hunter. “[The backers] got their heads handed to them at that meeting.”

The efforts of the campaigners paid off on April 9th, when Canaccord Capital, the investment broker that sold the paper to just over 1,400 of the 1,800 small investors, reversed its previous decision and said it would fully reimburse clients holding C$1m or less as long as the broader deal wins acceptance. Other companies have made similar promises and more are expected to do so before the vote.

If institutions are not capable to learn how to play on a more leveled playing field, the financial consequences can be devastating. That will probably apply to politics as well.

You go Grannies!