Pimp my ERP

In the MTV TV show, Pimp My Ride, a car in very poor condition is restored and customising it. Each car is a custom “pimp”, tailored to the personalities and interests of the owners.

In the ERP world, many companies take whatever their ERP system gives them, but this might not cover some important line of business functionality they require. The good news is that ERP systems have been adding a component called Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Here’s one definition:

A Service-oriented Architecture defines how two or more entities interact in such a way as to enable one entity to perform a unit of work on behalf of another entity. The unit of work is referred to as a service, and the service interactions are defined using a well-defined description language. Each interaction is self-contained and loosely coupled, so that each interaction remains independent of any other interaction.

and Wikipedia’s definition: “a computer systems architectural style for creating and using business processes, packaged as services.”

SYSPRO was one of the early adopters of Microsoft’s .Net Framework, and this has enabled the company I work at to develop customer- and industry-specific line of business applications, using the SYSPRO ERP as the basic information foundation. Effectively, we are able to ’pimp’ a company’s ERP to give specific functionality that a general ERP cannot do. 

The way SYSPRO’s SOA works is via its e.Net architecture. This comprises quite a number of business objects which provide a structured way of directly accessing the business functionality of SYSPRO while retaining the software’s integrity, business rules and security.

Getting value out of SOA requires good business understanding and programming skills by the consulting organisation, but also a vision and understanding by the business having the SOA implementation.

Companies like ours have the vision of what we can do with SOA, but without a similar vision by business leaders, the promise and benefits of SOA is not going to get realised. The problem seems that many business people (and CIOs) haven’t yet ‘got to grips’ with the opportunity that SOA offers. I wonder if there’s a TV network interested in doing a “Pimp My ERP” show?

Dealing with departing children

It is now one month since our son left home to attend Youth With a Mission (YWAM) in Cape Town, and I am beginning to get used to the fact of him not being around. We have spoken to him a few times on the phone, and were very grateful to hear that he appears to be coping and adapting well to his new life.

What struck me the other day though was how I would feel about him being away if he was going to to a place which wasn’t necessarily safe. Specifically, I wonder how parents in America feel when a son goes to Afghanistan or Iraq. I also wonder how my grand parents felt when my father went to fight in World War 2.

Its given me a new perspective on attitudes towards sending children off to fight.

God bless all those parents who are praying for the safe return of a son or daughter.

What is Microsoft doing with CRM pricing?

I have just heard that Microsoft has changed its pricing for Dynamics CRM, which will make it substantially harder to sell to smaller businesses.

Previously, a customer had a choice of purchasing either CRM Standard or CRM Professional, unless they had multiple branches in which case CRM Professional had to be purchased. Now, Microsoft has mandated that any customer with more than 5 users must purchase CRM Professional. The price difference apparently is significant and will result in some of our CRM prospects looking elsewhere for their CRM solution.

What makes it worse is that it sounds like Microsoft did not properly announce the price changes.

The Microsoft-Yahoo news

Not a lot of people outside IT seem to be aware of the news about Microsoft’s proposed take-over of Yahoo, but to those I have spoken to reckon it obvious that the plan is to stop Google.

A BBC report on it has the graph below that shows how the two companies share price is dropping

In another article, the BBC describes it as a shotgun marriage – referring to any hasty marriage which is arranged less out of the desire of the participants to marry, but rather to avoid embarrassment.