Challenges await head of new SAP user group

The Americas' SAP Users' Group announced its new CEO on Tuesday, nearly one year after parting ways with its previous chief. Chambers assumes the role previously held by Steve Strout, who was ousted by ASUG's board in November 2008 for undisclosed reasons. Interim CEO Bridgette Chambers will take leadership of ASUG, which represents about 70,000 individuals at 2,000 member companies.

Like Strout before her, a key issue before Chambers is SAP's controversial decision to move all customers to a fuller-featured but pricier Enterprise Support service. Following months of debate, SAP and the SAP User Group Executive Network (SUGEN), an organization made up of representatives from SAP user groups around the world, agreed to develop a set of KPIs (key performance indicators) meant to prove the value of Enterprise Support. While some European user groups were especially vocal about SAP's move, ASUG officials adopted a more moderate tone in public remarks. SAP has agreed to hold off on its incremental price increase schedule for Enterprise Support "until the targeted improvements measured by the SUGEN KPI Index are met." There will be an announcement regarding the KPIs later this year, said SAP spokesman Saswato Das. However, she added, "quite frankly, SAP can drop in every value-add they can, but at the end of the day the proof is in the KPIs. This adds value or it does not.

Some customers are more accepting than others of SAP's Enterprise Support decision, given that the company had held maintenance rates steady for many years, according to Chambers. If it does not, they need to understand the customer base is not open to this. Despite these ties, ASUG has retained its independence and objectivity, Chambers said. "I believe that is the clear differentiator for ASUG," she said. "Yes, we have close relationships with SAP. Yes, there is sharing of expenses for events ... [But] I don't really think you've got another organization that possesses the level of objectivity we do." Not all ASUG members are convinced, according to one observer. "The underlying concern that many ASUG members have expressed to us in the past has been that board members' organizations may have special relationships with SAP that could be jeopardized if they were to privately or publicly confront SAP on issues," said Ray Wang, a partner with the analyst firm Altimeter Group. "It would help usher in an era of transparency if members understood what those relationships are." Chambers declined to address the issues raised by Wang, saying it is not her position to speak for ASUG's board members. "I will say that I am pleased and proud to work for a board that is so interested in all the issues that impact the SAP ecosystem," she said. "I have watched board members work tirelessly to ensure that the mission of ASUG is supported." To that end, Chambers has a number of organizational goals and challenges on her plate, including plans to refocus ASUG around "education, influence and networking," she said. If it does, both SAP and customers win. ... We will help our customers make sure they get an answer." Even as it lobbies for members' interests, ASUG has had an intimate relationship with SAP, going as far as co-locating its annual user conference with the vendor's Sapphire show. Chambers has also been conducting a series of "town hall" meetings in recent weeks to gather feedback from ASUG members. You'll be able to verify the value is approximately 'X.' Right now, the answer [to that question] is softer."

In addition, by the end of 2010, ASUG members should be able to better determine how much return they've received on their investment in a membership, Chambers said. "What I will be able to do is make it measurable.

The scourge of complexity

While the definition of cloud computing is at best a bit fuzzy, the goal of cloud computing is extremely clear. As will be explained in this newsletter, complexity is the enemy of cloud computing. 11 cloud computing companies to watch In a recent article, Geir Ramleth the CIO of Bechtel stated that he benchmarked his organization against some Internet-based companies. That goal is to make a significant improvement in the cost effective, elastic provisioning of IT services.

According to that article, "Bechtel operates 230 applications, and it runs 3.5 versions per application. When you look at Salesforce.com, not only are they running one application, but they are running one version and they are only running it in one location," Ramleth says. That means it maintains approximately 800 applications at any given time. We don't see how Bechtel or any other IT organization will be able to fundamentally reduce cost and become more agile if it continues to offer a highly complex set of services. If his organization wants to make a change to some component of the IT infrastructure that supports one of the 230 applications they operate, they have to devote additional time to quality assurance to test how the change impacts each version of the application.

In the example that Ramleth gave, his organization will incur significant extra cost in part because it has to allocate resources to support on average 3.5 versions of each application. Bechtel is not the only IT organization that supports a complex environment. We believe that any IT organization that is serious about cloud computing has to get serious about simplifying the services that it provides. Many IT organizations utilize multiple WAN providers, develop a lot of custom applications, perform extensive customization of third-party applications, and have multiple systems for functions such as enterprise resource planning or supply chain management. What do you think? Is any effort being made to simplify that environment?

Do you work in a highly complex IT environment? Write to us and let us know. If you have a few minutes to fill out the survey, it will help us to cut through the hype and understand what IT organizations are actually doing relative to cloud computing. Also, we are performing a survey to help identify the concrete steps that IT organizations are taking to implement cloud computing.

NASA says 200-yard long asteroid will miss Earth

NASA scientists have recalculated the path of a large asteroid known as Apophis and now say it has only a very slim chance of banging into Earth. Initially, Apophis was thought to have a 2.7% chance of impacting Earth in 2029. Additional observations of the asteroid ruled out any possibility of an impact in 2029. The new data were documented by near-Earth object scientists Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The Apophis asteroid is approximately the size of two-and-a-half football fields and updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million, NASA stated. They will present their updated findings at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in Puerto Rico this week.

The information provided a more accurate glimpse of Apophis' orbit well into the latter part of this century. The recalculated trajectory came from scientists at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy in Manoa and its 88-inch telescope, located near the summit of Mauna Kea. Among the findings is another close encounter by the asteroid with Earth in 2068 with chance of impact currently at approximately three-in-a-million. NASA detects and tracks asteroids and comets passing close to Earth through its Near Earth-Object Observations Program or "Spaceguard." The program has been in the news lately as a National Academy of Sciences report said that while the space agency is tasked with watching out for huge chunks of space rocks that could smash into the earth, it has been denied the money to actually do the job. As with earlier orbital estimates where Earth impacts in 2029 and 2036 could not initially be ruled out due to the need for additional data, it is expected that the 2068 encounter will diminish in probability as more information about Apophis is acquired, NASA said. The problem is that while Congress mandated four years ago that NASA detect and track 90% of space rocks known as near earth objects (NEO) 140 kilometer in diameter or larger, it has not authorized any funds to build additional observatories, either in space or on the ground, to help NASA achieve its goals, according to a wide-ranging interim report on the topic released by the National Academy of Sciences this week.

NASA does carry out the "Spaceguard Survey" to find NEOs greater than 1 kilometer in diameter, and this program is currently budgeted at $4.1 million per year for FY 2006 through FY 2012. The report notes that United States is the only country that currently has an operating survey/detection program for discovering near-Earth objects; Canada and Germany are both building spacecraft that may contribute to the discovery of near-Earth objects. The report notes that NASA has managed to accomplish some of the killer asteroids mandate with existing telescopes but with over 6,000 known objects and countless others the task is relentless. However, neither mission will detect fainter or smaller objects than ground-based telescopes. Existing surveys are not designed for this purpose; they are designed to discover more-distant NEOs and to provide years of advance notice for possible impacts. The report goes on to state: Imminent impacts (such as those with very short warning times of hours or weeks) may require an improvement in current discovery capabilities. In the past, objects with short warning times have been discovered serendipitously as part of surveys having different objectives.

Search strategies for discovering imminent impacts need to be considered, and current surveys may need to be changed.

Compuware buys Gomez for $295 million

Compuware said Wednesday it has agreed to acquire Web application management vendor Gomez for US$295 million. Gomez's technology will work in concert with Compuware's portfolio of tools for managing the performance of on-premises applications, providing coverage "from the data center to the customer," the companies said in a statement. The transaction is expected to close in November. Such capabilities are crucial in today's IT environments, Compuware President Bob Paul said during a conference call Wednesday.

Those competitors offer only "narrow, keyhole views" into various areas, Paul claimed. For example, a retail banking transaction may begin with customers using an iPhone to connect with an online banking Web site, and end up spanning multiple third-party services, back-end databases, ISPs and mobile carriers, Paul said. "The complexity is staggering." The acquisition will bolster Compuware's ability to compete with the likes of Hewlett-Packard, CA and BMC in application performance management. Compuware will also gain fresh footholds in many of the world's largest Web properties. The acquisition announcement follows steps Gomez had taken to prepare for an IPO. The privately held vendor has 272 employees and is based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Gomez has about 2,500 customers, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Amazon.com, according to its Web site. Compuware is not planning any significant personnel changes, according to a statement.

Gomez's current product road map will also "essentially remain unchanged," and the Gomez brand will be retained, although plans to integrate the vendors' offerings are afoot, Compuware said.

Microsoft shows off Bing tool for measuring ad effectiveness

Microsoft on Monday demonstrated a new tool for its Bing search engine that will allow advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their ads with online users. Mehdi pointed out that statistics show that 39 percent of Web users do 65 percent of the online searches, so it would be beneficial for advertisers to see which of those "heavy users" are targeting certain ads, versus which ads are favored by "light users." The tool Microsoft created shows where the interest in a marketing or advertising campaign is specifically coming from, he said. Speaking at the IAB MIXX Conference and Expo 2009 in New York on Monday, Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft's Online Audience Business group, showed off what he called a "user-level targeting" tool that allows Microsoft to see which search-based ads that appear in the Bing search engine are getting the most traffic and from where. "What we're doing with Bing for vigorous measurement is we're matching the exact ad online with the exact user," he said. This measuring ability for Bing was demonstrated as part of Mehdi's presentation, in which he discussed how Microsoft is applying lessons it's learned from studying advertising campaigns and creating technology to reflect that learning.

You have to pick and focus." Microsoft revamped and rebranded its Live Search engine "Bing" in June, and making it more effective for search advertising is something the company continues to work on, Mehdi said. One of those lessons was what he characterized as "relentless measurement and optimization" to find out what ads are most effective so they can be better targeted to their proper audience. "One of the big things is trying to build a loyal fan base for the product," he said. "You can't just go out and put your message everywhere. It was unclear from Mehdi's presentation whether this technology is available for advertisers using Bing today or whether it's just something Microsoft is using internally. This kind of ability to measure what kinds of online advertising is working with users is becoming essential as more and more business is being done on the Web. A representative from Microsoft's public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom, declined to answer follow-up questions about the technology or his presentation.

In fact, Microsoft competitor Adobe Systems - an executive from which spoke before Mehdi on Monday - last week said it was purchasing Web analytics company Omniture to build measuring technology directly into Adobe's tools for creating online media.

Bank sues Google for ID of Gmail user

A bank that inadvertently sent confidential account information on 1,325 of its customers to the wrong Gmail address is suing Google for the identity of the Gmail account holder. According to court documents, the bank in August received a request from one of its customers asking for certain loan statements to be sent to a third-party. The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, involves Rocky Mountain Bank of Wyoming.

An employee of the bank, responding to the request, sent the documents to the wrong Gmail address. When it discovered the error, the bank immediately sent an e-mail to the Gmail address asking the recipient to delete the previous email and the attachment. In addition to the requested loan information, the bank employee also inadvertently attached a file containing names, addresses, tax identification numbers and other details on 1,325 account holders to the same address. The bank also asked the recipient to contact the bank to discuss what actions had been taken to comply with the bank's request. When Google refused to provide any information on the account without a formal subpoena or court order, the bank filed a complaint asking the court to force Google to identify the account holder.

When it received no reply, the bank sent an e-mail to Google asking whether the Gmail account was active or dormant and also what it could do to prevent unauthorized disclosure of the inadvertently leaked information. Rocky Mountain Bank also requested that its complaint and all of the pleadings and filings in the case be sealed. U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte dismissed that request, saying there was no need for the proceedings to be sealed. "An attempt by a bank to shield information about an unauthorized disclosure of confidential customer information until it can determine whether or not that information has been further disclosed and/or misused does not constitute a compelling reason," Whyte wrote last week. The bank said it hopd to prevent unnecessary panic among its customers and a "surge of inquiry from its customers." The bank argued that if the complaint and motion papers are not sealed, all of its customers would learn of the inadvertent disclosure. This is the third time in recent weeks that Google has faced a similar issue. The man alleged that the contributors to the paper had unfairly linked him to government corruption.

Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported that a resort developer in Miami had obtained a court order requiring Google to disclose the identities of anonymous contributors to an online newspaper in the Turks and Caicos Islands. In that case, Google indicated that it would disclose the data only after first informing the paper about the request and giving it a chance to appeal for the court order to be quashed. In the other incident, a court in New York compelled Google to disclose the identity of a blogger who had made disparaging comments about a Vogue model in her blog "Skanks in NYC."