Backblog

MIT's Technology Review published a really good article this week in response to Facebook's IPO (who hasn't commented on this?). But the article, The Facebook Fallacy by Michael Wolff, offers a perspective I hadn't seen addressed. Wolff uncovers the inherent problem of Facebook's reliance on ad-revenue as their business model.

SaaS and cloud ERP solutions are the highest growth segment of the ERP software industry. Companies such as Salesforce, Plex Systems, and Netsuite all continue to show robust increases in revenue while traditional, on-premise ERP systems are showing much slower rates of growth. As outlined in Panorama’s 2012 ERP Report, the market share of cloud-based ERP systems has grown from 6% to 16% in a single year. Even the traditional ERP vendors are redirecting R&D dollars to cloud and SaaS ERP solutions.

The eHealth 2012 conference kicked off with a keynote address from Dr. John Halamka, CIO, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Approximately 1,600 of the informatics and Health IT faithful are gathered in Vancouver for this 3 day event. In a departure from previous years (which were much more technology focused), the program has become increasingly more focused on delivering value to clinicians and improving patient care and driving value in the healthcare system.

Well, I'm sure only my most hard-core readers have been on the edge of their seats wondering about this. Since the Fall, I've had a sponsorship deal going with Modern Tailor, a Web-based tailor service based in China.

The decade-long Canadian copyright reform debate is nearing a conclusion as the government is slated to hold the third and final reading for Bill C-11 this week.

William Gibson, the American-Canadian science fiction writer who coined the term cyberspace, is well-known for having stated "the future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed." The quote succinctly points to the gradual dissemination of new technologies that start with first adopters but can take years to spread more widely.

The Business Software Alliance released its annual global software piracy report this week with new data that not only shows that Canada hit yet another all-time low but has experienced the biggest percentage decline in the world over the past five years.

I'm not a systems' theorist, but I do think to understand technology it helps to place it in relation to the larger technical picture. As such to help understand the various facets of how location-based services function, I developed a system-type diagram and a couple use cases.

Canada's proposed Internet surveillance was back in the news last week after speculation grew that government intends to keep the bill in legislative limbo until it dies on the order paper. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews denied the reports, maintaining that Bill C-30 will still be sent to committee for further study.

It's very rare for me to have back-to-back local events, but that's what's happening this week. Yesterday I attended Cisco Plus Canada 2012 here in Toronto. As Canadian telecom events go, it's pretty big, and Cisco is one of the few vendors up here who could draw a crowd like this.

Bill C-11, the copyright reform bill, passed the report stage yesterday, leaving only a third reading debate and vote before the bill heads to the House of Commons. While many good elements in the bill remain intact, it is worth noting what the Conservatives voted against by opposing every amendment proposed by the NDP, Liberals, Green Party, and Bloc at committee and at report stage. Proposed amendments that were defeated included:

Having used Google Docs for years now, I succumbed to Google's promos urging me to switch to Google Drive. I've been using cloud storage long before the term was coined and it was Yahoo Briefcase pioneering the concept (Google hasn't always done everything first). Well, I took Google Drive for a test drive yesterday and it crashed! I'm trying to get it towed off my computer and even that's failing, so I may be stuck with the wreck. (No more vehicular puns, I promise - although it is tempting to say I sufferred a Google Drive-by shooting.)

David Kedmey and Xiao-Ping (Steven) Zhang take home the top prize. EidoSearch is the grand prize winner of the Alpha Exchange Innovation Campaign, presented by Backbone. The company was chosen from a field of strong candidates at a live-pitch event May 15, held during the OCE Discovery 12 show in Toronto.

Even those marketers with exceptional social-network-savvy can struggle to keep up with the latest developments in leading social media. Acquisitions, new features and new platforms are a daily occurrence, and it can be easy to get lost in the sea of updates in the social world. Similarly, it can also be easy to lose sight of which are actually of benefit to your business.

This week the leading location-based service Foursquare announced it had achieved 20 million users. Despite the milestone, critics were quick to point out that check-in services were dead. Over the past few months other major check-in based services such as Loopt, Gowalla, BrightKite, and Facebook places have shut down or been acquired and closed.

Earlier this month, ISG joined the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) as a corporate member. Here’s a description of this organization:

The government yesterday gave notice of time allocation on the Bill C-11 debate, which will cut short the debate over the copyright bill. The move does not come as a surprise, given the willingness to use time allocation for other bills and the Conservatives' consistent position that it will not further amend the bill.

I'm in the process of preparing for my PhD comprehensive exams (or rather my faculty's equivalent). So I'm currently enmeshed in the literature related to my topic - how people use location-based services to make sense of their places.

The majority of physicians I know are very protective of their personal workspace. They do not like outsiders traipsing through their practices, potentially compromising patient privacy. They also do not like having anyone mess with their computers, servers, EMRs, and billing software. After all, if it is not broken, why fix it? In a solo or small medical practice, it can be difficult to justify the expense of regular computer and network maintenance, particularly when it comes at a cost that exceeds the medical practitioners’ hourly revenue-generating capabilities. However, without maintenance, both short- and long-term costs of an EMR can be significantly higher.

For anyone that has seen an episode of the television series “House of Lies,” it paints a disturbing (yet at times entertaining) picture of the consulting industry. One episode allegedly explores the concept of shady ERP consulting practices, which is obviously of interest to Panorama since we are an ERP consulting firm. Although it may sound a bit far-fetched and the show strives for a strong shock-factor, it does underscore the potential risks of ethically questionable practices when hiring consultants to help with your ERP systems initiatives.

The government posted its Reports on Plans and Priorities for dozens of departments and agencies yesterday. The Industry Canada report makes for interesting reading as there is a section on the still missing Digital Economy Strategy that includes targets for e-commerce buying and selling in Canada.

It all comes down to this: three hours, 10 finalists and a panel of industry experts. And by 5:00 pm on May 15, the winner of the Alpha Exchange Innovation Campaign will be known. The 10 finalists — in no particular order — are:

Every now and then, you come to a crossroad where you are forced to reinvent your business lest you hit a proverbial wall. You’re not the only one.

I want to lay something on the line here, right from the outset: an ERP implementation is not an IT initiative. When an organization believes that it is, and tasks the IT department with everything from software selection to implementation to training to internal communication, it is setting itself up for ERP failure.

Last week’s IT Financial Management Association (ITFMA) conference in San Francisco marked the 25th anniversary of the association dedicated to professionals involved with the financial management of IT.  Conference attendees came from a variety of industries and government organizations with some attendees travelling from as far afield as Africa.

The rapid transition to EHR and the integration of information technology in the delivery of patient care has had a transformational impact on medical offices and hospitals. There are many positive effects of the technology, including rapid access to laboratory information, diagnostic reports, and medication histories. However, there is also a potential dark side to the technology.

Independent analysts and consultants are hard to come by here in Canada, but long-time colleague Henry Dortmans is one of the best. He's from the technology consulting world, and has a deep reach into both the end user/IT community as well as the consultants and vendors on the solutions side. Like me, he's got an endless curiousity about the bigger picture, and occasionally puts together a survey to take the temperature of the market on current trends. He just did one on the cloud, and I wanted to share the key takeaways with you here.

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority, the non-profit agency charged with managing the dot-ca domain name, has emerged in recent years as an important voice on Internet governance. Backed by a big bank account - CIRA earns millions of dollars each year for maintaining the domain name registry - it has launched an annual Internet governance forum attended by hundreds of Canadians, partnered with various groups to help small businesses establish an online presence, and sponsored many Canadian Internet-related events.