To all my readers, I wish you all a Merry Christmas 2005. Have a good and restful time with your family and friends.
And, if you don’t celebrate, have a good time too ;-) Some are …umh… exagerating?
[via Alek’s Christmas Lights]
I am very proud to announce you that we created officially and legally this morning, on December 23, 2005, the ecenter solutions, a new company of the Helvetia Patria Group, located in Zurich – Switzerland, as a corporation (in German: Aktiengesellschaft / AG).
I would like to share with you this very very perticular and exciting day for me, and this, one day before Christmas. Wow, what a marvelous gift :-)
Some of you already know that for a while, I have started a spin-off process of the Business Unit I am responsible for – the so-called eCenter – within the Helvetia Patria Group, for about 13 months now, exactly on November 18, 2004.
Thirteen months…..of ups and downs, of deep doubts, of tough political games, of incredible challenges for bringing mentally the daily works and the spin-off process further and at the same time, of slepless nights. I have thought I know my motivation drivers well before this process, umh, it is clearer now, I can tell you ;-)
All this completely crazy and unbeliveable spin-off process was *only* possible because I had the support of:
Warm thanks to *all* of you who are now supporting us and following us in this new exciting journey.
So, how to have a better start?
And some very tough but interesting remaining strategic issues which have to be solved in the coming months……
Am I really the CEO of this company? Too great to be true. Or, in other words, one of my dream is becoming true.
The next months will be very exciting, no doubt. Also no restful time planned!
Nick and myself at the end of the first (informal) Board of Directors meeting
Off to Denmark for the coming days, my first time in Copenhagen. We will stay in the hotel Copenhagen Strand.
Huge program, with different face2face. I am excited ;-)
It should (must!) be my last travel this year, hopefully!
[via Jeff & Bruce Silver]
Wow, what for a move!! Intalio, a new entrant in the Open Source stack (stack representation from Optaros) as Business Process Management Suite:
Step One was the acquisition of FiveSight Technologies, the company that brought to market the first open source implementation of the BPEL 2.0 specification. Embedded by major open source projects such as the ServiceMix Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and leading development tools like Sun’s Java Studio Enterprise, the FiveSight PXE BPEL 2.0 engine – rebranded Intalio|BPMS – is effectively the most widely deployed BPEL product today. Intalio is planning to continue the development of the BPEL engine under the open source Common Public License, and release its BPMN process modeler and BPEL4People workflow component under similar open source licenses later in 2006. The Intalio|BPMS Open Source Edition includes these three components plus open source ESB, integration adapters, and rule engine. Its customers will be mainly independent software vendors, who will embed the engine and tools into their own end user offerings.
For end user organizations looking to implement BPMS, Intalio will also offer the Community Edition. Community Edition is not open source, but it is free. Based on the open source BPEL engine, workflow extensions, and BPMN modeler, Community Edition is a complete J2EE BPMS, including a full Eclipse-based BPMN process designer supporting data mapping and simulation, a rule engine, ESB, integration adapters, metadata repository, and a full BAM suite. The only “catch,” if you want to call it that, is that it runs on Geronimo, the Apache open source app server and the MySQL database. Unlike competitive free offerings like Oracle BPEL Manager, not only is the development environment free but so is the production environment.
On last Thursday evening, I have organized a completely crazy wine-tasting for our annually ecenter christmas event. This, with the help of the Cultural Federation of the French Wines (Fédération Culturelle des Vins de France), which is really great because, as their name doesn’t show, they are interested in wines from all around the world.
So, for us (we were 14), we had 12 *great* wines. Have a look:
1) France – Champagne Krug Cuvée 1990
2)France Rhône – Costière de Nîmes blanc Cuvée Excellence 2004 Mas des Bressades
3)Portugal – Réserva blanc 2004 Conde d’Ervideria
4) Italy – Pinot Néro 2003 Domaine Manccini
5) France Bourgogne – Mâcon Pierreclos “En Chavigne” 2001 Domaine Guffen’s
6) France Bordeaux – Pomerol Château Clinet 1994
7) France Bourgogne – Pommard 1er Cru “Fremiers” 2003 Domaine Boulay
8) Austria – Merlot 2002 Domaine Weninger
9) Spain – Réserva Pago de los Capellanes 2001
10) Italy – Brunello di Montalcino Valdicave “Madonna del Piano” 1999
11) Portugal – Porto Vintage 2000 Domaine Quinta do Estahno
12) France Alsace – Muscat Sélection Grains Nobles 2000 Domaine BarmesS Buecher
Wow. Grazy :-)
Drink moderately and safely. Enjoy your alcohol!
I have integrated some little changes in my blog. Among others, new (extended) blogroll. Just the part I read daily (focus!):
I have spent three days in the Swiss Alps beginning of this week, beautiful place, snow, sunny. Great :-)
[click]
Great view on the Santis.
Gmail Mobile
Now you can access your Gmail account from your mobile phone or device. Just point your phone’s web browser to http://m.gmail.com. Your Gmail account stays synched, whether you access it from the web or the mobile interface. It’s easy to use and it’s free (but yes, your wireless plan could still charge you).It also has these cool features:
- Automatically optimizes the interface for the phone you’re using
- Opens the attachments you receive in messages, including photos, Microsoft Word documents and .pdf files
- Lets you reply by call to people whose phone numbers are in your Gmail Contacts list
Working very well on my Blackberry 7100v.
I am off for the coming three days, in the Swiss Alps for an IT Management workshop. Hope the weather will be good :-)
[via Scott Adams]
How the techonology could help to speed up buying stuff. And how far it could be difficult to find the right gift for your better-half, also for women ;-) I definitely *like* the Scott Adams’ humour.
I asked my fiancé what she wants for Christmas and she was nice enough to e-mail me a specific suggestion for a hard-to-find item.
I copied the product name from her e-mail, pasted it into the Froogle search engine, and found the cheapest one on the Internet. That took about 12 seconds. It took another minute to enter my address and credit card information.
When it comes to gift-giving, they say it’s the thought that counts. So far I had 72 seconds invested in my future wife. I wondered if that was enough.
I knew that my fiance’s job of shopping for me wouldn’t be so easy. I have the deadly combination of not caring much about material possessions plus a high disposable income. In the unlikely event that I decide I want something that’s small enough to fit in a box, I buy it that same day.