Tag Archives: software

Innoveo – A real life example of productive SOA solutions

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soa for dummies

Two years ago a first version of the publication “Service Oriented Architecture for Dummies” has been published. Therein our reference customer, the Helvetia Insurance Group, was mentioned together with the solution we have successfully put in place for them.

In the second, reviewed edition, Innoveo has been dedicated again one full chapter of the book. Still our solution is considered to be a practical, state of the art example of how SOA can work in real life, creating both, an enhanced efficiency and cost optimization on the IT side as well as real business benefits on the customer side.

We are proud of having been selected by Judith Hurwitz for her book and we wish Judith again an amazing success with this new publication.

Find more information about the book on Judith Hurwitz’s Weblog. Judith is one of the authors and we’ve had the pleasure to be directly in contact with her to discuss the content and the progresses we’ve made in the time between the first and the second edition.

You can order the book at Amazon.com.

Get additional information about our consulting services and our insurance frontend solution Innoveo Skye™ by visiting our company website.

cross-posted as Innoveo News.

Firefox Add-on – ScrapBook

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I am not using so many Firefox Add-ons but this one – ScrapBook – is just great!

You can download it here.

What is ScrapBook

ScrapBook is a Firefox extension, which helps you to save Web pages and manage the collection. Key features are lightness, speed, accuracy and multi-language support.

Functionalities

Major features are:

Good tutorial here (pdf, 692KB)

Screenshot

 

scrapbook

My new lens: Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS

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canon EFS 28 200

I am using a Canon EOS 20D since April 2005 (!) with 2 lenses:

I have taken a majority of my pictures with the 17-40mm, which is really very nice. Now, for travelling, and specially when you are in a “non-safe” atmosphere (humidity, dust, sand, etc.), it is quite difficult to change your lens. Without speaking about the transport ;-)

Canon has released this autumn a new lens, which is to my mind the “perfect” compromise between an ultrawide-angle and a zoom lens, the Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6, with Image Stabilization, but without the USM (Ultra Sonic Motor). Perfect compromise for the usage means also automatically … some optical compromises! Which “forces” me to start to use a “post-production” software, to be able to correct some very visible optical aberrations (barrel distortion, chromatic aberration, softness, etc.) with this lens. I am using DxO Optics Pro, but I will talk about that in a coming post!

Good summary from Wikipedia

Reviews indicate that the 18-200 does not compare to the 28-300L in terms of image quality, though this is understandable since the latter is priced much higher, due to it belonging to the L-series line. Most reviewers have criticised the lens for high levels of barrel distortion at the wide end, and chromatic aberration and softness evident at all focal lengths and apertures. The lack of an UltraSonic Motor has also been noted by reviewers, and along with the 18-55 IS has given rise to concerns that Canon may be moving towards removing USM from their lower-end lenses. It has generally been rated higher than Sigma and Tamron’s offerings however, and has gotten generally positive reviews with the caveat that it is designed for convenience rather than image quality.

Some detailed reviews

Scenarios For 2009: How CIOs Should Prepare (Forrester research)

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via Ed Cone

Ed is pointing to a very interesting document from Forrester about the reactions of CIOs, classified by sectors. Including the Finance &  Insurance industries.

For the Insurance Industry, the analysis of Forrester is quite aligned with what we are perceiving at Innoveo.

The analysis is very recent and was presented during a webinar on December 11, 2008.

What is the insurance industry doing to address the downturn?

  • Anticipating more cut backs for 2009.
  • Insurance has already made significant cuts in IT spending early in 2008.
  • Growth in IT purchases for Finance & Insurance:
    • 2007: +8%
    • 2008: -2%
    • 2009: -3%

How will the recession affect the Insurance Industry?

  • Shallow recession: GOOD
  • Deep recession: NEUTRAL

What are firms in these sectors doing to address the downturn?

  • Most firms focus on IT’s traditional cost-cutting tactics.
  • New investments (30% of the overall costs):
    • Portfolio segmentation
      • Use commodity / low-cost resources
      • Eliminate large-sized efforts
      • Focus on short-term returns
    • Adopt lean thinking, reduce complexity
    • Shorten planning horizons
  • Operational costs (70% of the overall costs):
    • Consolidation/standardization, consistent with the business model
      • Data centers, server/storage virtualization
      • Consolidate and squeeze vendors
      • Centralization of IT contracts
    • Lean thinking — reduce complexity,
    • Staff and asset utilization optimization
      • Delay upgrades and refresh
      • Downgrade for lower volumes
      • Automate where it makes sense

The Finance & Insurance sectors are considering to invest in the following actions in 2009:

  • Retiring older applications or technologies to save support costs 50%
  • Adjusting project portfolios to increase near-term return on investment 55%
  • Assessing the IT organization structure to improve efficiencies 60%
  • Investing in technologies such as automation to reduce IT operating costs 70%

Leading firms take multiple alternative approaches:

  • Traditional IT tactics to deliver short-term results
  • Agility to offer alternatives in the long run — providing a lasting ability to rapidly shift partners, customers, and markets
    • Focus on increasing ability to change: adding/removing services, reselling services from third parties, channel integration
    • Focus on external interfaces to data and systems
      • Apply SOA for strategic flexibility
      • Look to third parties for flexible interfaces
    • Increase flexibility of contracts
    • Employ agile development methodologies
  • Innovation to accelerate out of the downturn — new business models and product/service offerings in addition to operational improvements
    • Accelerating out of the downturn requires a strategic focus, but without higher overall costs
    • Use a portion of CapEx for innovative ideas
    • Focus innovation criteria on business strategies
    • Use Web 2.0 technologies to farm ideas from across your Innovation Network — internal and external
    • Employ a different idea pipeline / steering committee
    • Keep investment performance metrics

Summary for the Finance & Insurance sectors:

 

summary forrester

2009 will be a complicated year for software

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via Judith Hurwitz

One of the first “predictions list” for 2009 for software companies.

Very interesting insights!

  1. Software as a Service (SaaS) goes mainstream. It isn’t just for small companies anymore. […]
  2. Tough economic times favor the big and stable technology companies. […] The only way emerging companies will survive is to do what I call “follow the pain”. In other words, come up with compelling technology that solves really tough problems that others can’t do. They need to fill the white space that the big vendors have not filled yet. […]
  3. The Service Oriented Architecture market enters the post hype phase. […]
  4. Service Management gets hot. […]
  5. The desktop takes a beating in a tough economy. When times get tough companies look for ways to cut back and I expect that the desktop will be an area where companies will delay replacement of existing PCs. […]
  6. The Cloud grows more serious. […] Just as companies are moving to SaaS because of economic reasons, companies will move to Clouds with the same goal – decreasing capital expenditures.  Companies will start to have to gain an understanding of the impact of trusting a third party provider. […]
  7. There will be tech companies that fail in 2009. […]
  8. Open Source will soar in this tight market. […] Companies that offer commercial open source will emerge as strong players.
  9. Software goes vertical. I am not talking about packaged software. I anticipate that more and more companies will begin to package everything based on a solutions focus. […]
  10. Appliances become a software platform of choice for customers. […] More software solutions will be sold with prepackaged solutions to make the acceptance rate for complex enterprise software easier.
  11. Companies will spend money on anticipation management. […] Companies will need to understand not just what happened last year but where they should invest for the future. They cannot do this without understanding their data.

Wow, good food for thoughts!

I am excited also to be able to read the new version of the book “SOA for Dummies”, written, among others, by Judith Hurwitz. Innoveo should have there its own chapter, hopefully ;-)

10 characteristics of software companies that will fail

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via Judith Hurwitz

Extremely interesting post from Judith. She is listing the 10 characteristics of software companies that will make them fail in the coming economical downturn phase.

  1. My technology is so revolutionary everyone will want it.
  2. The platform we offer to our customers is a complete architecture and we’re going to build an ecosystem.
  3. We don’t plan to try to partner with the big players; it’s too hard.
  4. We’d love to partner with a large vendor if they are willing to put our product on their price list and sell for us.
  5. We sell a great tool.
  6. Our technology sells itself.
  7. We sell an entire turnkey environment.
  8. We are implementing precisely what our customers tell us they need.
  9. We are thinking about Software as a Service (SaaS)…but…
  10. We are limiting our outreach in the market. It is too expensive to advertise or market. We’re going to wait until things get better.

So, are you “in” or “out”?

Innoveo Skye, a Swiss made software!

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swiss made software

At Innoveo, we are member of the swiss made software community, since our creation.

“swiss made software” is the new label of the Swiss software industry. International software companies like Google, IBM or Microsoft have discovered the Swiss values – quality, reliability and precision – in software development and have established important research and development centers in Switzerland. If you are looking for Swiss values and innovation, openness and flexibility in software, choose your partner from this site.

Our software product – Innoveo Skye – is now also listed in the new product part of the swiss made software website.

Description: Innoveo Skye is a generic, flexible insurance sales solution. It supports an unlimited number of products and services, all lines of business (life and non-life) and all sales channels. Industrialize  
Technology: Insurance-specific, J2EE (TM) based IT solution on commercial (Weblogic (TM), Websphere (TM), …) and open source (JBoss (TM)) infrastructure stacks, together with a wide range of business-oriented services. 

sugarCRM

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via ITRmanager.com (in French)

At Innoveo, we are using intensively sugarCRM since the start of our company, for managing in a structured way our contacts, leads, opportunities and marketing material. At the end, our sales-funnel is managed in sugarCRM.

We are using the professional version of sugarCRM, which is a commercial open source CRM software. This allows us to connect in a very easy way Microsoft Outlook and sugarCRM (archiving of emails of example). Below you can have an idea about the different versions of sugarCRM:

sugarCRM

ITRmanager has just posted an interesting interview with the CEO of sugarCRM, John Roberts:

  • founded in 2004
  • 180 employees
  • 4’000 customers of the commercial editions of the product, more than 500 in Europe
  • 450’000 users
  • 5 million downloads
  • one of the biggest PHP project, with more than 600’00 SLOC (Single Lines Of Code)
  • 40 software developers that are working full-time on the product
  • published under GPL v3
  • 4 founding rounds for a total of $46 million
  • their goal is not to propose free software, but a very good functional product for a cheaper price than its competitors, because of a different sales and marketing structure
  • 80% of license sold, 20% on-demand
  • only the software engineers of sugarCRM are developing the core-product, which represents 50 to 60% of the overall code
  • about 100 external developers are contributing actively
  • about 12’000 developers are representing the sugarCRM community and developing extensions (about 500 extensions so far)
  • about 80’000 users are building the overall community, participating to the forums, roadmaps, tests, etc.
  • IPO was planned for 2009, will be postponed
  • about $20 million cash-reserve
  • positive cash-flow planned for Q1/2009

Research & Development investments in 2007

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via ITRmanager.com (in French)

An interesting study showing the amount of the investment in R&D; at different technology-oriented companies.

Besides the amount of investments, I think that it is interesting to have a look at the investment in R&D; as a % of the revenues of the company. This % is showing how far R&D; and innovation is central or not for these companies.

Company Revenues 2007 (in mio EUR) R&D; 2007 (in mio EUR) R&D; in % of the revenues
Symbian 264 128 48%
IONA 53 14 26%
Dassault Systems 1’259 292 23%
Adobe 2’160 419 19%
Alcatel-Lucent 18’005 3’368 19%
Yahoo! 4’767 818 17%
Intel 26’219 3’936 15%
SUN 9’489 1’384 15%
SAP 10’256 1’458 14%
Microsoft 41’325 5’584 14%
Cisco 23’885 3’077 13%
Google 11’350 1’450 13%
Oracle 15’341 1’875 12%
Nokia 51’058 5’281 10%
SunGard 3’352 203 6%
IBM 67’566 3’931 6%
Apple 16’419 586 4%
HP 71’130 2’470 3%
Swisscom 6’699 45 1%

 

Some surprises, no?

Articles, conferences, reports, books, collaterals and video

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Above an updated list (per October 18, 2008) of the different publications, articles, conferences, reports, books, collaterals and video linked with my work in the last years by Helvetia, ecenter solutions, and now, innoveo!

 

  ARTICLES        
1 31.10.2002 German, English Switzerland Schweizer Versicherung pdf DE, pdf EN, url
2 26.11.2004 French France 01 Informatique pdf, url
3 06.01.2006 English USA CIO Insight pdf, url
4 01.02.2006 English Rusia The Insurer pdf, url
5 11.04.2006 English USA FinanceOnWindow pdf, url
6 11.04.2006 English USA Finextra pdf, url
7 12.04.2006 English USA CRMtoday pdf, url
8 13.04.2006 English USA InfoWorld pdf, url
9 20.04.2006 English Australia ComputerWorld Australia pdf, url
10 24.04.2006 English USA ComputerWorld pdf, url
11 30.04.2006 English USA Enterprise Networks&Servers; pdf, url
12 15.05.2006 English NewZealand ComputerWorld NewZealand pdf, url
13 30.06.2006 German Switzerland Netzwoche pdf, url
14 01.07.2006 English USA Insurance Networking pdf, url
15 10.07.2006 English USA Computerwire pdf, url
16 24.07.2006 English USA GlobalServices pdf, url
17 04.09.2006 German Germany ComputerZeitung pdf, url
18 06.11.2006 English USA Baseline pdf, url
19 01.11.2007 German Switzerland ICT in Finance pdf, url
           
CONFERENCES        
1 16.04.2003 German Switzerland Euroforum – VersicherungsIT pdf, url
2 15.09.2005 German Switzerland IT-Strategie-Forum pdf, url
3 29.11.2005 English Russia International Conference pdf, url
4 15.05.2006 English Italy HP Enterprise Executive Summit pdf, url
5 19.09.2006 English Belgium euroOSCON pdf, url
           
REPORTS        
1 19.11.2005 English USA Thoughtware Worldwide pdf, url
2 01.11.2006 English USA Hurwitz & Associates pdf, url
3 01.12.2006 English USA Butler Group report pdf, url
4 16.01.2007 English USA Celent pdf, url
5 01.06.2007 English USA ovum report pdf, url
           
COLLATERALS        
1 01.01.2001 German, English Switzerland HP Success Story pdf DE, pdf EN
2 01.01.2002 German, English Switzerland HP Success Story pdf DE, pdf EN
3 23.10.2006 English USA HP Success Story pdf
4 01.08.2008 English Switzerland HP Marketing Collateral pdf
           
VIDEOS        
1 01.10.2006 English USA HP Video url