Look, IT has missed the boat in nearly every shop I've been in as far as the business is concerned. We think big, we think enterprise, and we think perfect. The executive wants that because they are thinking of cost reduction/containment and a strategy to move forward and that's what IT says -- you'll get the benefits if we just keep throwing money at complexity. But the general business population doesn't want this. They want a quick, cheap, flexible solution. Now. Not in 18 months after then next 3 million dollar upgrade. Not the inflexible ERP screens they've been given. Just something that works. Today. And, by the way, can I get it on my blackberry?
SOA, Agile, and the WWW give us that. But it gives us a lot of headaches too. Like security. And scalability. And the biggie - loss of IT control. If we let the business mashup their own apps to meet their needs, what do we do when the phone rings to fix an app we didn't build or architect? Don't look for all the answers in this book, because nobody's got them. But we've gotta move faster, more cheaply, and more flexibly if we're going to harvest the big gains promised by the massive "end-to-end" solutions offered by the big ERP systems. SAP is SOA-enabled, so is Microsoft. The book offers the great advice that I've been trying to give our leadership for the past 6 months: stop thinking big, stop thinking end-to-end and 3 years out. Let's build something now with the tools we have.
So what are we waiting for? Let's go.
Good quotes:
"Replace the big project mentality of IT with a build-and-run-fast culture."
"Good enough, rather than perfect, is the target when systems are not built to last."
"Mobility is not an afterthought."
"There are only two types of standards, essentially: any standard that is relevant to the success of a group or industry in question is good, and any standard that isn't relevant to success is bad."
http://www.amazon.com/Mashup-Corporations-End-Business-Usual/dp/0978921801/sr=11-1/qid=1165957495/ref=sr_11_1/103-6384050-3430252
