But please don’t cut and paste real people’s  data from Linkedin or other social networks and use it in your demo.  You are trampling over their privacy and copyright, and you are probably  in breach of the Linkedin or Facebook  T&Cs too.   If you use photos,  get permission, even from your employees.

Be careful when you demo social software integration too.  People linked with you to be friends, or connections, not demo fodder.

Tread softly, for you tread on my data.

Apologies to W.B. Yeats.

Portia:
Tarry a little, there is something else.
This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood;
The words expressly are "a pound of flesh."

(painting by Alexandre Canbanel. The Merchant of Venice)

The jury has decided.  SAP owes Oracle 1.3 Billion dollars.  I’ll leave others to speculate on whether SAP appeals, if is a fair sum,  or whether there will be other legal ramifications.  

Watching it all has been fun. Good theatre, with some dramatic performance and and even more dramatic absence.  Tabloid stuff.

1. The amount, while breaking records  for  copyright infringement,  will not impact SAP’s ability to do business.  It has plenty of cash, and there is a serendipitous symmetry with the recent 1,5 billion dollar credit facility.  While it could slow down share buybacks, I doubt that it will have a real impact on its development or marketing spend. It would be wrong for SAP to shrink into cost cutting mode to fund this, but I don’t think they will anyway. 
2. The case illustrates the hyper-competitive and ruthless nature of the industry.  Neither firm emerges Persil white from the process.  I’m not sure that it will really make a difference to how CIO’s view SAP or Oracle. Most CIO’s know that this is a pretty ruthless and aggressive business.  Oracle’s field will have a bit of fun in the sales cycle with this, but I doubt it will really impact business.
3. Most software executives and developers have minimal understanding of copyright law and its implications.  Coming out of this, I’d hope that software developers think a little bit more about intellectual property and IT law generally. This would be a good thing.  I’d like to see software companies funding more IT law research and studies, but then I’m biased.
4. Software companies using intellectual property to beat each other up in court isn’t new, but this judgment will encourage more of the same.
5. The judgment was not about the legality of third party maintenance.  The SAP-Oracle case and Rimini Street –Oracle case will be quite different.  I don’t think we should conflate them.  The SAP-Oracle case was good entertainment, but it was just about damages. In the long run the Rimini Street case is more important for the whole industry.  I ‘m not assuming that just because SAP admitted that TomorrowNow was toxic, all third party maintenance is somehow tainted. 

These are my musings, rather than a formal Gartner position.

(Okay, the heading was from Romeo and Juliet, and the quote from Merchant of Venice)

For two days, once every two years, the cry of “Yurop” rings out. The blue flag with the circle of  stars is waved with vim and vigour.

Flickr cc photo attribution. Llywodraeth Cymru thanks

When deploying HR software remember that it is not the Ryder Cup. There is no such thing as a European requirement when it comes to HR. Things turn nationalistic. The French, Irish, Germans, British and Luxembourgers all do things differently.

“What about privacy or working time?” you ask. Well even European “laws” aren’t really laws, they are Directives, which are  then implemented at the national level, often in markedly different ways and pace.

When HR vendors talk of their European or worse an  EMEA strategy, I get worried. It means they don’t get the space.

(photo CC 2.o attribution, thanks to g-hat!)

World leaders are gathering in Pittsburgh to discuss banking reform and other pressing matters. According to the Guardian,  the discussions are likely to be rocky.

European leaders appeared to be on a collision course tonight with Barack Obama and Gordon Brown after Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, warned that the G20 summit must not be diverted from clamping down on bankers’ bonuses and hedge funds.

The article continues.

Sarkozy has suggested that bankers’ pay should be capped at a certain percentage of their institution’s assets or revenue.

Fredrick Reinfeldt, the Swedish prime minister and current president of the European council, promised a “specific discussion” on bonuses including proposals for individual caps on bankers’ bonuses, that bonuses would be linked to achievement and not given if there were losses, and that there would be transparency on precise decisions taken by boards. “We from the EU will ask to be very clear on that” he said.

Putting aside the ethical and political debate, if Fredrick and Nicolas have their way, this would particularly riveting for anyone in the business of HCM software.

It looks to me this is a demand for an integrated employee goals / performance management, compensation and incentive compensation system that also integrates into a corporate performance and risk management system, combined with a significant dose of compliance reporting. 

It is full of excellent nuggets. Obsess about your customers, not your competitors. Invent. Think long term. Be prepared to be misunderstood.  I wonder how many other CEO’s could present their business principles in this precise yet genuine way?  I believe the presentation was mainly aimed at the employees of Zappos. Amazon recently acquired them.  If I was a Zappos employee this would go a long way to making me feel welcome. 

Last night I was chatting to a colleague of mine in the US about ERP’s future. We then ended up discussing the history of the software industry. At what point do the ERP vendors of today face significant new forms of competition, and how will they react, what will threaten them, who will adapt and who won’t?  History can be a useful guide. We briefly touched on DEC, IBM, Dun&Bradstreet, Cullinet, ADR and so on. I suggested that he read Martin Campbell-Kelly’s excellent "from Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog- A history of the software Industry."  While we were talking he ordered it on his Kindle so that he could read it on the beach. He then proceeded to convince me that the Kindle was "awesome", which in turn then led me to read some Gartner Research on e-paper so that I could figure out how the Kindle could work in bright sunlight when I should have been working on my e-Recruitment Magic Quadrant.

The Kindle has started a bit of a blaze (bad pun I know). I’m following the "1984" incident with interest. Bezos’s apology was rapid, genuine and appropriate, but as Cory Doctorow points out, there are more issues around the Kindle that require resolution.  The Kindle is not only creating issues for Amazon, it is creating challenges for copyright law, publishers, and authors. How this plays out will impact fundamentally how we read. That is a big responsibility.

click here if it doesn’t display.

From the cc flickrstream of sludgegulper Thanks!

I have been watching and reading about the goings on with the UK parliamentarian expenses with a mixture of incredulousness, dismay, horror, and anger. As this isn’t the place to charge off on a political rant, I’ll leave my criticisms to a minimum, save to say this is a grave insult to the UK tax payers, and a blow to global democracy.  

Other than all the information about moat cleaners, tennis courts, duck shelters, large screen TVs, iPhones for husbands, 200 mile taxi rides, tax advisors, and mortgage payments on mortgages that no longer existed, I was struck by the absolute lack of process and systems to manage the expenses. The inefficiencies and the lack of control are astounding. 

The problems are bigger than technology, The whole process needs a complete overall, but essentially we are talking about some basic compliance procedures. Workflow approvals, automated routing of claims out of policy, electronic receipt management,and SOD (separation of duties).  Even simple expense management system would go a long way to stopping this sort of abuse happening again. Rules can be easily automated and enforced, and with a bit of configuration, even issues such as flipping and claiming for trivia could be managed.

Driven out of a good process system, the data could also be easily mashed up with consumer analytics tools such as Google maps, and a simple query tool, allowing concerned citizens the right to audit.

Indeed, there has been a wave of excellent mashups and analytic reports based on the data that has been released and collated.

Charles Arthur over at the Guardian has a closer look.  Tony Hirst’s blog gives an excellent account on the technical efforts needed to do this. Looking at what he has done with essentially free software. It is interesting to see how various technologies and techniques have been deployed. more here.  It is a fascinating study for anyone interested in analytics and data visualization. It does make the analytics offerings of many of the software vendors I cover seem rather dowdy, but that story is for another day.

Shining a bit of sunshine on the issue by opening up the data  is the best remedy. After all, when I last looked, parliamentarians work for the citizens.

I enjoy long distance cycling, and throughout the warmer months of the year, I try and get out on my bicycle most days. I normally train for a big event, involving some big hills, so that I have a goal to aim for. I do my best thinking on my bike. Pain somehow helps clear the brain.

It also means I can talk about bicycle components and bore people to death at will.

I had a quick trip to the US last week, and because of meetings, I couldn’t fly out on Friday evening. So I got to sneak in a quick ride with some friends before I flew back on Saturday lunchtime.  I packed my cycling shoes, pedals and a helmet, and Mark kindly lent me a bike. It was easy to plug my pedals onto his spare bike.  Standards in the physical world just seem to work, unlike those in software.

It was a much better way to spend a Saturday morning than trawling a mall, or doing email in the airport lounge. We rode through the pretty rolling hills between Woodside and Redwood, just south of San Francisco. 6 months ago, it would have been a gentle spin, but I felt it in my legs and lungs by the time we got back.  Putting it simply, I’m not as fit as I was then. That fitness that I worked at constantly through last spring, summer and autumn has faded.  This was a sharp reminder that last year’s efforts matter very little this year. Now that the days are a bit longer, I need to find time to get out on the bike again. Use it or lose it.

What has this got to do with payroll?

Well, quite a lot.

A payroll also gets out of shape very quickly if you don’t focus on regular maintenance, much more so than most other systems. Rules and laws change often, as governments add new layers of regulation. New laws and taxes often make what worked perfectly last year no longer valid. When looking at HR systems and especially payrolls, you need to ask the tough questions. Getting payroll fit isn’t easy, but staying payroll fit is even harder.  Look your vendor in the eye. Figure out whether they are just selling you the bicycle or whether they will help keep you in shape.

John Prescott, former UK deputy Prime Minister,  took on the Bank bonus issue in the UK.

Anne took on the Facebook Terms of Service. She blogged about her reasons for starting the group.

I hadn’t read anything about any changes to the TOS up until then and was surprised to see they were changed weeks ago and without anyone noticing.
I have had an ambivalent relationship with Facebook since I signed up (it’s complicated), and in the years I have been there they haven’t done much to make me trust their service or their judgments, so I felt I had to speak up this time.
After some initial research (reading the old and new TOS for instance) I set up the group on Facebook about an hour later.

Personally it wasn’t so much about getting Facebook to change their TOS (at least initially). If you read the old TOS you would have known that they always sucked and probably always will. Ideally they would add the two lines they removed again, edit the wording in some places, explain why they felt they needed to change the Terms of Service and how these changes would affect their users.

The group has well over 100,000 members now, and Facebook has reinstated the old TOS.

Here is Anne on Norwegian TV.

Unlike John Prescott, Anne isn’t a politician. She is actually an enterprise  software implementation expert. She focuses on ERP/Abobe integration and form design.  I recently spoke with Anne about Adobe Forms and ERP Integration as part of some upcoming research I’m doing.

Well done Anne. This is a fabulous illustration of the power of social software. It also yet another example of Facebook making a blunder on basic legal concepts. (they should be taking my survey)