Economy and business

Offshoring

2006-12-05T21:42:00.000-08:00

I find the offshoring topic be very interesting and timely. And today I would like to share my point of view about offshoring.

First of all I would say that I do not see any advantages of that for the USA. Because I am trying to look at it not from the point of view of individuals like the corporate shareholder who will definately benefit from it but I see how it influences the USA economy and employment.

To be more reliable I am presenting the following data, all of them are influenced by the offshoring.

The U.S. economy experienced an acute job creation crisis between 2001 and 2004: between March to March in these years private-sector jobs declined by 2.6 million.

While the manufacturing sector lost 15% of its jobs from March 2001 to March 2004, the software-producing industries lost an even-higher 16% share of their jobs. Moreover, jobs in software occupations within the manufacturing sector shrank even faster than overall manufacturing jobs. Between 2000 and 2002, total manufacturing jobs fell by 12%, while software jobs within manufacturing dropped by 19%, affecting workers who were told for the past 20 years that they had precisely the skills needed to thrive in the global economy.
Sending technical work overseas U.S. firms undermined the job security traditionally expected by white-collar workers with advanced technical skills. And it also made wage growth slower.

All these actions lead to boost the economy of those countries where the USA is trying to "develop" its offshoring business but at the same time it harms its own economy.

I was told by one professor that he thinks that the USA is able now to digest this tendency. Probably it can but I worry what happens in 10 or 15 years when the growth of the offshoring tendency will have the same pace it has now. My personal prediction is very sad. The USA can lose that power it has now because they invested too much in other countries instead of developing its own industries?!

ERP and horror stories

2006-12-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

In general everyone can say that ERP system is a good "invention". But do we really know what it can cause if it wasn't developed in the right way? One article (http://www.isaca.org) that attracted my attention depicts some drawbacks and consequences made by ERP system.

The following are descriptions of recent catastrophic ERP failures in the private sector:

Hershey Foods - a 19 percent drop in earnings was caused by an incompetent ERP implementation that wreaked distribution havoc during one of its most profitable seasons in the US: Halloween.
FoxMeyer Drugs - this pharmaceutical distribution company was forced to declare bankruptcy after an unsuccessful ERP implementation.
Whirlpool - ERP implementation crippled its shipping system, leaving appliances stacked on loading docks and not delivered to paying customers for a full eight weeks.
Volkswagen - significant delays in parts shipments caused product inventories to build up to costly levels.

It has been estimated that half of the issues in ERP disasters are not technical but are people and culture related. Many of the failures can be attributed to poor change management in the form of inadequate training. Trainers need to understand the legacy system processes and know how to translate these process into the new processes called for in the ERP.

In the US government, the General Accounting Office has identified the following problem with ERP implementations:

Department of Defense - Defense civilian personnel data system: Costs rose US $248 million to about US $1.3 billion.
Labor Department: Costs jumped from US $26.5 million to US $71 million, due to underestimating implementation and operating costs.
Department of Veteran's Affairs: Costs jumped from US $170 million to US $417 million, and the project is currently two years behind schedule.
NASA: Its ERP failed to produce accurate financial reports. The system was unable to close year-end books on a Cal Tech contract.

The author of this article came to the conclusion that I share completely. These "horror stories" point out a number of key considerations.

First, there is a need to carefully plan and execute an ERP implementation, because the failures can be catastrophic. This undertaking is definitely not for risk-averse organizations unless there is a crisis driving the organization toward an ERP.

Second, ERP vendors rarely discuss these failures (unless they involved a competitor); therefore, you must be able to see through the hype and understand possible consequences of ERP implementation.

Finally, these horror stories serve as valuable experiences, keeping other implementers from falling into the same trap.

Security and IRS

2006-11-20T08:13:00.000-08:00

Today I would like to discuss how the information we provide to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is secured.

First of all, I found the following in the website of IRS: "We make no attempts to identify individual users unless we suspect illegal behavior. To keep this service available and secure, we monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to add or change information, or otherwise cause damage to the website. By using this website you consent to such monitoring. Unauthorized attempts to upload information and/or change information on this website are strictly prohibited". Moreover, "The confidentiality of Internet transactions is not guaranteed. You must decide if you want to assume the risk that an unauthorized person may learn your email address or other information you may provide as it is transmitted. Once received by IRS your information is secured. We will not email refund information, account data, tax data, or other personal information as part of our response to you".

According to the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration (http://seclists.org/isn/2006/Feb/0116.html) the IRS has not consistently maintained the security settings it established and deployed under a common operating environment (COE), resulting in a high risk of exploitation for some of its computers.

Recently, the IRS has adopted a common operating environment for security configurations on all of its workstations. The common environment should let the IRS control security configuration settings and software on workstations by using one master COE template, which the IRS installs on its computers. The IRS has installed the master COE image on 95 percent of its computers. But of 102 computers tested, only 41 percent continued to be in compliance; 59 percent were not or contained at least one high-risk vulnerability that would allow the computer to be exploited or rendered unusable. Almost one-half of the compliant computers contained at least one incorrect setting that could allow employees to circumvent security controls established by the common operating environment.

Also, at the time of the audit, the COE security settings had not been installed on more than 4,700 computers. Without them, computers were missing security patches and at high risk for viruses. In addition, the IRS at the time did not own a software license tracking or metering tool that could identify software use for a baseline inventory. For example, the IRS spends up to $32 million annually for Microsoft Office suite products. But the IRS could not explain how it arrived at the number of licenses needed.

Nowadays they are working to correct their problems. But I did not find the results of their progress. It may be no progress?

For me all that information was scary even the IRS has declared that all information is secured facts are opposite - there is no guarantee that your personal information was not used for illegal purposes.

IRS and electronic datawarehousing

2006-11-12T19:22:00.000-08:00

I would like to expand the topic dedicated to data warehousing issues. In my previous blogging I made an overview about how government agencies handle their huge pools of data. Today I will look closer to the IRS system and its electronic datawarehousing (EDW). I found this information on the IRS website http://www.irs.gov/privacy/article/0,,id=153366,00.html.

So, in September 2001, the IRS initiated the EDW Project. The business goal of EDW was to provide integrated, reliable tax operations and internal management information to support the IRS's evolving decisions analytics, performance measurement, and management information needs. The EDW Project strategy was to incrementally build an enterprise wide data warehouse of detail data. And data marts were designed to meet predictable strategic and tactical information needs. The data warehouse and data marts are using a mixture of existing and modernized tax operations and internal management systems as sources of data.

This system is using the following:

taxpayer account, taxpayer return, and case data;
employee type, skills, classification number, and general status data;
internal Management budget, cost, travel, procurement, and asset data.

Access to the system and control to prevent the misuse (e.g. browsing) of data by those having access

The access to the EDW is belonging to business analysts/researchers and planning/operations managers. And their access to data is controlled by security profiles. The specific documents contain information regarding data access controls and procedures such as EDW Security Features User Guide (SFUG), EDW Trusted Facilities Manual (TFM). At the same time user access is restricted to the minimum necessary to perform normal job duties. EDW uses existing mainframe and UNIX system application and database access control and logging capabilities.

The retention period

EDW is not the operational system of record for taxpayer/ employee data. Data retention is based on requirements for decision analysis and reporting. Retention requirements are the current year plus the prior 3 years immediately accessible (minimum requirement for trend analysis) and 20 years offline (delayed access).

Detail data residing in EDW is not updated. New data from operational systems is added during daily/weekly EDW processing. Moreover, EDW is not used to contact, locate, or monitor taxpayers. Only taxpayer information required for decision analytics, agency performance measurement, and management reporting is extracted from operational systems and stored in EDW.

Besides, there are no potential effects on due process rights of taxpayers and employees. If the analysis research results in the need to contact taxpayers, the information will be passed to operations personnel who will initiate contact and record results using operations procedures to ensure due process.

Unfortunately, there is no discussion about challenges they encounter using the EDW. But what I can conclude from reading this information that the primary goal of that system is to store data and if necessary to do some analysis or research what it usually does.

Data warehousing and government agencies

2006-11-05T17:11:00.000-08:00

I was always wondering how government agencies manage extremely huge pools of data and what technologies they use. And I found the interesting article (http://www.sybase.com/detail?id=1038814) that in someway describes and summarizes the methods of some government agencies.

Each year, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) loads 1.7 terabytes of individual and business tax information into billions of rows and over 200 columns of data storage, all with complex links to associated schedules and other attachments.
U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), which provides data, analysis and consulting services to the Department of Transportation, other federal agencies, universities, trade associations, the media, the U.S. Congress and the public at large, maintains a system which contains more than 400 tables across 100 databases, with total raw data storage of roughly 2.5 terabytes.

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), the centralized U.S. Federal procurement and property management agency, has a system which manages 425,000 users, 10.5 million products and 14,000 vendors, with more than 2,000 users conducting some 37,000 searches an hour.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is responsible for tracking all daily stock transactions conducted in the United States, has four divisions and 18 offices, including 11 regional offices throughout the country, and has a data warehouse of 320 gigabytes.
The U.S. government is not alone. Governments around the globe face the same challenges. So how do they cope with all that data?

This article promotes Sybase's world-class analytics server, Sybase IQ that "produces high query/reporting performance; highly efficient storage of the large volumes of data; faster and more intelligent decisions based upon real-time information".

The IRS "relies on Sybase IQ" to deliver data in a single integrated environment, with data standardized for decision-making and analysis. It holds seven years of individual and business tax return information, amounting to 12 TB of input data, and achieves a 70 percent compression rate. It supplies users with relevant, timely, and accurate data. It handles complex and changing data. It provides fast, flexible analysis. Finally, it continues to grow with the data but without performance degradation or additional hidden costs.
For BTS, "its Sybase IQ-based system, TranStats", provides a single point of access, consistent metadata for efficient searches, the ability to selectively download data by a choice of variables, online interactive analysis through tables, charts, and dynamic maps, and automatic cross-database linkages and data standardization for more focused analysis decision making. TranStats is a huge success for the agency, with an average of over 25,000 Web hits per day. Loading and indexing data, which used to take hours, now require only 30 minutes.

Sybase IQ provides the system of GSA with high availability, system integration, and lightning fast search capability: an estimated 10 searches a second. The GSA estimates that its Sybase IQ-based solution saves it over $10 million a year.
The SEC, which needed a completely new system to manage a robust disaster recovery architecture and allow it to process large amounts of data while increasing the system's performance, used Sybase IQ to create a flexible, scalable, and reliable data-rich warehouse producing faster load times and query results, and more comprehensive information views - all at a lower cost. Samuel Foster, President of FosterSoft, a SEC contractor said,"Since we've been live with the new system, there has been no unplanned downtime. None".

Of course, this article was written as an advertisement but for me it was interesting to read.

Software program - SAP e-recruiting.

2006-10-22T15:50:00.000-07:00

SAP E-Recruiting, an innovative new software application, covers the whole recruiting process chain, from planning and budgeting to attracting candidates, hiring, and retaining employees. The application connects recruiting processes with internal HR infrastructures. Integrated workflows automate the flow of information and processes. SAP E-Recruiting allows you to post employment opportunities on job boards and to direct incoming electronic applications into internal processing channels - automatically through the same medium. The result is a collaboration of all internal employees and external partners in the recruiting chain, which in turn smoothes the way for cross-enterprise process integration.
The following elements, core functions of modern recruiting, form the backbone of the application:

- Talent warehouse
- Recruiter
- Analytics

Talent warehouse
The talent warehouse in SAP E-Recruiting integrates external and internal recruiting on a single global platform. Candidates can increase career options while line managers can gain a larger pool of potential job candidates - in their own country and abroad. The warehouse provides recruiters a wealth of possibilities for maintaining positive, active relationships with candidates.

Recruiter
SAP E-Recruiting manages various posting channels. For example, job postings can be directed automatically to internal channels and transported via an XML interface to external job boards. The recruiter regulates incoming applications, both postal and online, using workflow-supported processes. It triggers application rejections, invitations to an interview, and interview appointments automatically - and coordinates the activities of all parties involved in the recruiting process.

Analytics
To ensure the ongoing optimization of your recruiting processes, you must have access to up-to-date information. In this area, SAP E-Recruiting benefits from SAP's extensive experience in data warehousing, offering functions for reporting and evaluations as well as planning and controlling.

Being the innovation and as a consequence being not very cheap not many companies can afford this software (or simply just waiting to be assured it its real efficiency). But what I found in the internet the company "Hugo Boss" already implemented this program and it seems to be very astonished by its usefulness and efficiency.

By the way, the e-recruiting system could be a good example against Carr's theory, which shows that the developed SAP e-recruiting system software produce a competitive advantage to already existing similar previous technology.

http://www.sap.com/solutions/business-suite/erp/hcm/pdf/SAP_INFO_Hugo_Boss.pdf

http://www.sap.com/belux/solutions/business-suite/erp/hcm/pdf/BWP_SB_E_Recruiting.pdf

Additional information about e-recruiting

2006-10-22T15:33:00.000-07:00

I was set up the task to find out what companies are using the e-recruiting system what do not and what job seekers are thinking about that. Unfortunately I could not find the statistical data about those specific targets for 2006 but what we can observe in our "internet age" that almost each company, no mater what size it is, has its web site, huge amount of them have a column "Career" . Only a little amount of tiny-sized companies - usually family owned - do not have their own web site and as a consequence no e-recruiting system. But they do not need it! Why? As an example let us take the private family dental business. I am attending the family dentist who has the staff including only him and his assistant. He does not need to pay for installing the expensive e-recruiting system. When I asked him how he found his assistant he told me that he just applied to the recruitment agency and they did it for him. And of course those recruitment agencies have these innovations. Returning to my dentist he does not have even his own website. He is explaining that his name is on the web sites of insurance companies that information provided is covering all about him and his practice.
Furthermore, my conclusion based on the recent investigation done will be the following:
1. No doubts that e-recruiting system is very cost-efficient for the company and worth of being used;
2. Companies, who have the HR department, without any doubts possess it - because it is widely spoken everywhere: "It saves both costs and time";
3. But there is a little amount of companies not having it because they simply do not need it (for example, they have a few quantity of personnel to be rarely rotated) - it will be much-much cheaper to use services of the recruitment agency.

Now about the opinion of job seekers - to category of which I belong.
Job seekers moved to the Internet long ago. The benefits to job seekers of using the Internet are significant. According to the article "E-recruitment next generation" surfing is less expensive than purchasing print media, job seekers find at least four times as many jobs advertised than in print, and with greatly detailed job descriptions. Searching is a lot more targeted and faster online than sifting through newspapers.
Job seeker responses have been unanimously positive. What appealed most was the fact that candidates knew that they were providing the company with exactly the information they needed, rather than posting a CV and "hoping it was what they were after".
I completely agree what was said above. But what really annoys me some companies "did not elaborate the system to the end" you can be stuck at any stage if you do not find the solution programmed by the system. But in general it is easy and fun.
And also it is a very good movement and development which facilitates the communication between the employer and employee.

http://www.istart.co.nz/index/HM20/PC0/PV23539/EX23420/AR23802;

http://users.ugent.be/~flievens/internet.pdf;

http://www.benefitnews.com/career/detail.cfm?id=1496&arch=1.

Benefits of e-recruiting system

2006-10-09T08:45:00.000-07:00

According to e-recruitment analysts interbiznet.com, there are currently 15 million annual job changes taking place in the U.S. workforce of 100,000,000 people - resulting in an estimated $90 billion market of "cost to hire expenses." To reduce this cost, Internet technologies are increasingly centralizing and integrating the entire corporate recruiting process into an e-business supply chain. According to iLogos Research, 79% of companies now recruit on their corporate Web sites - up dramatically from only 29% in 1998. Corporate Web sites are becoming the primary interface of an Internet-based hiring management system - that brings increased efficiencies and productivity to the corporate recruiting process.
Until recently, the typical recruitment process followed the following management flow:
1. Defining the position; 2. sourcing candidates: 3. visual screening of resume/application; 4. interviewing; 5. offer and hiring and 6. hopefully, retention. Within this model, both hiring managers and recruiters have been historically dependent on paper-based systems and outdated communications that result in billions in hiring and personnel management inefficiencies and constraints.
With new, e-recruiting-based models emerging, costs that are now wasted on administrative tasks and manpower can be severely slashed. The resulting benefits established enterprises by lower costs of recruitment, faster time to hire and greater retention. This can only be accomplished with a fast, simple, cost-effective method of online candidate interviewing and assessment.

Traditional recruiting methods that are reactive and oriented to an abundant supply of talent are outdated in today's economy. Competition for good candidates will favor companies who are adopters of the Internet tools now being offered. Investment in candidate acquisition and assessment will differentiate companies who are efficiently recruiting from those using traditional methods. In order for human resources departments to secure budgets to purchase these new solutions, they must prove their value to the organization. Faster, more accurate hiring of high priority openings will help companies earn profit quicker - allowing HR departments to affect the bottom line instead of remaining an overhead cost center.

Source: http://fitability.com/about/industryoverview.asp

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3495

E-recruiting

2006-09-29T18:03:00.000-07:00

In doing research for strategic uses of technology in business I found very interesting article that attracted my attention: "E-recruiting: opportunities and challenges" published in journal "Information Management", Fall 2006. Recently, a Web-enabled e-recruiting emerged quickly as a powerful method for both job seekers and recruiters. E-recruiting has driven companies to redesign the recruiting process and to move quickly to Web-based integrated human resource systems that provide standardized frameworks for key personnel processes. Companies are using their career Web sites to give detailed job information, to explain the culture and benefits, and to promote long-tem relationships with job seekers.

E-recruiting system was introduced in the mid-1990s and has evolved through numerous technological developments. At the early stage of a corporate e-recruiting system, the purpose of the career Web site was simply to post job openings on the static Web page for job seekers' information. As e-commerce technologies advance and recruiters gain more e-recruiting experience, the front-end e-recruiting systems add new features and functions, target job seekers better, and integrate with a back-end human resource management system. An advanced e-recruiting system of large companies has been powered by an enterprise-wide system and has incorporated best practice recruiting methodologies to achieve strategic advantage.

But the benefits of e-recruiting can be only accomplished with the extensive use of a central database and an array of Web-enabled integrated applications. Given the complexity of an integrated system, it is essential to create an architecture that will guide the development of interrelated components that support the e-recruiting phases and other human resource processes. If clear architecture has not been established, it is difficult to realize fully the e-recruiting potential. Having established a comprehensive architecture, companies then can undertake the development and integration of various e-recruiting technologies that are likely to lead to their desired results.

And as a summary e-recruiting has a potential to reduce hiring costs and time and to improve the quantity and quality of job applicants, but there are four major challenges that remain to be overcome: organizational, managerial, legal, and technological challenges.

What is Quickbook?

2006-09-23T18:27:00.000-07:00

Is there anyone there who has not heard of QuickBooks? If there are someones I hope this information would be interesting for you. QuickBooks was first introduced by Intuit back in 1992. Today, more than three million small businesses are registered with this dynamic accounting software. Intuit spends a lot of money on advertising QuickBooks to be very user-friendly, easy to navigate. But despite that the software does offer many functions that are easy to use such as writing checks, paying bills, making deposits, etc. However, there are more complicated issues such as fixed assets, owner equity, payroll tax issues and so on in which a non-accountant simply does not have the expertise. And QuickBooks does offer comprehensive support, classes, forums, etc. which can be very useful and I suggest to take advantage of all the tools available on http://quickbooks.intuit.com.

Generally speaking, QuickBooks is a good choice for businesses with annual revenues of less than $2 million, and often an acceptable choice for much larger businesses. These packages are inexpensive in comparison to some of the other more specialized accounting packages out on the market today.

A sampling of the packages QuickBooks offers is: QuickBooks Simple Start. This package is ideal for new or very small businesses with few employees that currently pay bills and bill customers by hand, and track expenses, sales and customers on paper or with a spreadsheet, but would like to do it much more easily and efficiently.

QuickBooks Pro. This package is for businesses that want the basic tools included in Simple Start, plus easy, efficient way to manage more complex business information, such as accounts payable, job costs, employee time, payroll cash flow, assets and loans. QuickBooks Pro also offers customizable invoices, flexible reporting, and a fast, easy way to exchange information with Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook, and more than 300 other business applications.

QuickBooks Premier. This package is for more complex businesses with specialized needs or businesses that want to optimize their finances and plan for the future. QuickBooks Premier is also available in editions customized for specific industries.

QuickBooks Online Edition. This package is designed for small businesses with a mobile workforce that want to give multiple employees access to company data from any Internet-connected PC, anywhere, anytime.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions. This package is the top-of-the-line. It is designed for mid-size or fast-growing businesses with multiple locations.

Additionally, there are products available that are made to work alone or together with the QuickBooks financial software products mentioned above. These include QuickBooks Point of Sale for retail stores, QuickBooks Payroll for businesses with employees, and third-party products.

Since QuickBooks' inception in 1992, many industry-specific packages have been made available through the QuickBooks Premier software. There are packages for accounting professionals, contractors, manufacturing and wholesale, non-profit organizations, professional services (attorneys, architects, consulting firms, etc.), retailers (to include point of sale capabilities). As you can see, QuickBooks provides something for every business. Since QuickBooks has so many registered users, there is a huge network of support available in the form of a QuickBooks library, forums, telephone support, local certified advisors, etc. Many CPA firms hire in-house QuickBooks advisors to assist in set-up, training, and on-going support for clients.

If you would like to have more information about Quickbook software go http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/computer-software-accounting/4168-1.html where advisor Jillian Dearing walk you through all the ins and outs of QuickBooks. I also used some information from her.

Updated information about blogging in economy and business

2006-09-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

I would like to raise the credibility to my ivestigation about blogging in economy and business, that I described in "Blogging in economy and business" dated September 03, 2006 .

I picked up the most interesting blogs to me in this field. And I also used some information about blogging in the related field from www.forbes.com.

Econoblogs:

www.econlog.econlib.org Armed with a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Arnold Kling is on a mission. Economics isn't covered particularly well by the mainstream media, he says, and producing a Web log on the subject presents a chance to do it easily and inexpensively. In 1994, Kling launched one of the Internet's first commercial ventures, Homefair.com. Five years later, he sold it to Homestore.com for $85 million, netting 2% of the sale price for himself. Living what he calls "an inexpensive lifestyle," Kling, 48, now pursues volunteer efforts like blogging about the economy and teaching high-school economics. EconLog is hosted by the Library of Economics and Liberty, which is a project of the nonprofit Liberty Fund, an Indianapolis-based free-market think tank.

www.argmax.com John Irons loves keeping a close eye on the latest economic data and related news. So much so that he designed a software program--a "bot"--to automatically keep track of the latest information for himself and his readers. A professor of economics at Amherst College in Amherst, Mass., he's been writing about economics online since 1997, when he hosted a site for Primedia's About.com. ArgMax (the name is a mathematical term to designate "the argument of the maximum") launched in March of 2002. With a rather small audience, hosting expenses are pocket change, and he has a few advertisers taking out small text ads on the site.

www.knowledgeproblem.com The energy markets usually provide a pretty good clue to where the overall economy is headed. Lynne Kiesling tracks them for a living, as director of economic policy for the libertarian Reason Foundation in Chicago, and a frequent media pundit on energy issues. An economist educated at Northwestern University, she says the blog started as a place to keep track of sites she linked to frequently, then evolved into a daily commentary on the movements of oil prices, hydrogen power and the state of the electrical grid. She says writing on a daily basis makes her more productive. "It helps me generate ideas I never would have had otherwise." Her blog is wonderful. Visit it and you will definately like it!

Business blogs:

www.microenterprisejournal.com/JournalBlog. This is the official weblog of The MicroEnterprise Journal, it includes politics, news and notes from around the web, editorial commentary. Dawn Rivers Baker (aka The Journal Blogger) is the editor and publisher of The MicroEnterprise Journal and the Microbusiness News Briefs.

www.smallbiztrends.com This site is a blogsite. Blog + site = blogsite. That means a core component of this site is a blog. In addition to a blog, this site also has other traditional website pages, such as the About, FAQs, and so on. Founded in 2002 by Anita Campbell, former executive with Bell & Howell, this ambitious blog tracks a wide range of international trends and issues reshaping small businesses, through news commentary, blog reviews and links to expert articles, interviews and book summaries. Updated even on weekends, the blog tries to be all things to all people, directly addressing businesses. It pinpoints the latest trends in small business, from overseas franchising to specialty ice cream to senior care.

www.allbusiness.com/blog/metablog.asp This blog covers a LOT Of topics that are browseable by caregories (just only few of them: Retail, Sales, Starting a Business, Home-Based Business, Women in business, Finance and Accounting) - it is a large spectra of business interests. Everynone can find something for yourself here. All Business offers straightforward talk on basic topics especially pertinent to upstarts, like business plans and loans. Unfortunately I could not find out who founded this blog but I can say that 50 advisors are working in this blog and its content is updated daily, even on weekends. Really awesome blog! I strongly recommend to visit it!

Service-Oriented Architecture or SOA

2006-09-10T13:20:00.000-07:00

Nowadays rival companies are working together to develop a common programming model to help speed development and encourage the implementation of service-oriented architectures (or SOAs). The group hopes to create a set of uniform specifications that can evolve into a standardization body by the end of 2006. Members of the collaboration include: BEA; CapeClear; IBM; Interface21; IONA; Oracle; Primeton Technologies; Progress Software; Red Hat; Rogue Wave Software; SAP; Software AG; Sun Microsystems; Sybase; TIBCO Software, Inc.; Xcalia; and Zend http://businesstechnologyadvisor.com/doc/18258.

What does SOA mean?
The term Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) expresses a perspective of software architecture that defines the use of services to support the requirements of software users. It is according to Wikipedia encyclopedia. But this definition did not give me anything to understand the concept of SOA. Let's take advantage of the article "What Is Service-Oriented Architecture" by Hao He.(http://www.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2003/09/30/soa.html)

"Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." -- Albert Einstein
Unfortunately, far too many software systems have failed Einstein's test. Some are made too simple to carry out the duties they are supposed to perform. Others are made too complex, and the costs of building and maintaining them have rocketed. It seems that reaching the right level of simplicity is more like a dream than reality.

Now we have a lot of software systems where we may observe the reuse of the functionality of existing systems rather than building them from scratch. A real dependency is a state of affairs in which one system depends on the functionality provided by another. If the world only contained real dependencies, Einstein's test would have been satisfied long time ago. The problem is that we also create artificial dependencies along with real dependencies.
If you travel overseas on business, you know that you must bring power adapters along with you or your life will be miserable. The real dependency is that you need power; the artificial dependency is that your plug must fit into the local outlet. The lesson here is that we cannot remove artificial dependencies, but we can reduce them. If the artificial dependencies among systems have been reduced, ideally, to their minimum, we have achieved loose coupling. In that sense, Einstein was just talking about was loose coupling. We might rework his famous principle thus: "Artificial dependencies should be reduced to the minimum but real dependencies should not be altered."

Definition and Explanation of SOA

Now we can define a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA is an architectural style whose goal is to achieve loose coupling among interacting software agents. A service is a unit of work done by a service provider to achieve desired end results for a service consumer. Both provider and consumer are roles played by software agents on behalf of their owners.
SOA is actually everywhere. Take a CD for instance. If you want to play it, you put your CD into a CD player and the player plays it for you. The CD player offers a CD playing service. Which is nice because you can replace one CD player with another. But now object oriented programming style strongly suggests that you should bind data and its processing together. So, in object oriented programming style, every CD would come with its own player and they are not supposed to be separated. This sounds odd, but it's the way we have built many software systems. And the idea of SOA departs significantly from that of object oriented programming .
How does SOA achieve loose coupling among interacting software agents? It does so by employing two architectural constraints:
A small set of simple and ubiquitous interfaces to all participating software agents. Only generic semantics are encoded at the interfaces. The interfaces should be universally available for all providers and consumers.
Descriptive messages constrained by an extensible schema delivered through the interfaces. No, or only minimal, system behavior is prescribed by messages. A schema limits the vocabulary and structure of messages. An extensible schema allows new versions of services to be introduced without breaking existing services.
As illustrated in the power adapter example, interfacing is fundamentally important. If interfaces do not work, systems do not work. An interface needs to prescribe system behavior, and this is very difficult to implement correctly across different platforms and languages. Remote interfaces are also the slowest part of most distributed applications. Instead of building new interfaces for each application, it makes sense to reuse a few generic ones for all applications.
Since we have only a few generic interfaces available, we must express application-specific semantics in messages. We can send any kind of message over our interfaces, but there are a few rules to follow before we can say that an architecture is service oriented.
First, the messages must be descriptive, rather than instructive, because the service provider is responsible for solving the problem.
Second, service providers will be unable to understand your request if your messages are not written in a format, structure, and vocabulary that is understood by all parties.
Third, extensibility is vitally important. The world is an ever-changing place and so is any environment in which a software system lives. Those changes demand corresponding changes in the software system, service consumers, providers, and the messages they exchange. If messages are not extensible, consumers and providers will be locked into one particular version of a service.

Fourth, an SOA must have a mechanism that enables a consumer to discover a service provider under the context of a service sought by the consumer.

So, the combination of services - internal and external to an organization - make up a service-oriented architecture.

As was mentioned above right now we have a big group that is working on the project to come up with a common programming model for assemblers and developers to use that will speed and encourage the implementation of SOAs. Application developers will be able to work in the language of their choice and expose software assets as a collection of flexible services to improve the agility of their systems and meet new and expanding business requirements.

Thorny path to find a strategic use of technology in business

2006-09-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

In our management information systems class we had a task to find and describe the strategic use of technology in a specific chosen area, for me it was, of course, in economy and business area.

Frankly speaking it wasn't very difficult to do that because in business (I purposely do not mention economy that is more narrow field than business one) you will find something either innovative or strategic. So, I found some headings that attracted my attention and fondly thought that just reading them would be enough to describe this or that innovation. But my enthusiasm was "extinguished" as I started reading those articles. I hardly understood what was about in them: They were written by such a specific language that I felt like an idiot. In spite of my choosing different technologies they were highlighted in the same manner, designated only for IT specialist. With such bad experience I decided to stop on a particular topic, namely "Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)" and explore it by interpreting everything into "normal" language.

What it means you can read it in the following heading "Service-Oriented Architecture or SOA".

I hope it will be UNDERSTANDABLE and useful for you.

Blogging in economy and business

2006-09-03T20:17:00.000-07:00

I have just researched about blogging in economy and business and can conlude that there exists separation between economy blogging and business blogging. What else I observed that quantity of business blogging prevails over that of economy blogging.

In general economy blogging or shortly "econoblogging" focuses mainly on macroeconomic isssues ranging from monetary policy to deficit spending to energy supplies. And what I really liked that some of the econoblogging were written by people who have dedicated their lives to economics issues and have Ph.D. in this field. They feel that economics is not covered very well by media and producing a weblog on the subject presents a chance to do it easily and inexpensively (according to www.forbes.com).

What concerns business blogging: here you encounter with diversity of presenting the material. As business covers a lot of topics, for example it can be either small business or personal finance or real estate etc., you can find different visions and styles embracing this field. It ranges from websites having blogs dedicated to business issues to separate blogs covering particular business topics.

Anyway if you would like to find econoblogs or business blogs you will definitely find them. And some of them will be really interesting, useful and helpful.

Welcome

2006-09-02T01:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome everybody!

Thank you for taking a second and looking at this webpage.

I am opening the blog called "Economy and business". There is no doubt that economy plays an important role as in the life of the country as in everybody's life, and business, in its turn, is foundation for the nation's prosperity and success . That is why I have chosen such a topic that can influence or even change the history of the mankind.

For this blog I will try to find the most interesting material and current information related to economy and business issues.

And I hope everyone will find something useful for yourself.

Have a great holiday!