Thomas Otter

(photo via cc attribution licence. ms4jah thanks.
Most of my working career encouraged me to chant the mantra, “we are integrated.”  I have spent the last year or so thinking about integration in a more objective light. Integration for me has undergone a de-reification process.
I was doing a presentation about HR technology recently, and I [...]

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(photo mine, use with cc attribution licence) Hotel Fusion, San Francisco.
I’m just back home from a trip to California. I attended Oracle Open World, and had several other meetings in the bay area. 
I saw the Keynote presentation, and on the next day  I spent an hour or so with the leaders of HCM [...]

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I’ve tried this metaphor on several client calls recently, so let me inflict it on you too.
Cactus

via Flickr, the cc licence of Rodolfo Cartas thanks.
In this architecture, everything is from one vendor, and integration with third party applications is rather difficult. Typical ERP /HRMS pitch of the mid-nineties. Why do you need other [...]

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(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 [...]

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Lego is used a lot as a metaphor in the software industry, and I’m not sure that it is a particularly good metaphor. I my distant past I blogged about this here.
I came across the story of James May’s Lego house this evening. James May is one of the fellows on Top Gear, and he [...]

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The demise of a URL shortening service, Tri.um  made me think a bit about the Internet generally.
There are decades of science, engineering, standards, governance and accident that have created the protocols that make the Internet work. Its openness, flexibility and to use Zittrain’s term, generative nature, are in a  large part  because the Internet isn’t [...]

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I spoke with an organization the other day, they are re-implementing a core HR administrative system, because the implementation they did several years ago hasn’t had the take up from the HR department users. This puzzled me a bit. How come HR users can decide whether to use the corporate system or not?  Administrative Finance [...]

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photo via wikipedia. thanks!
This weekend we did some camping, just across the border into France, and very close to part of Maginot Line. Next time I visit that area I’m going to take some time and actually visit a couple of Ouvrages, go inside and see the working railway and the logistics of [...]

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St Petersburg has had several name changes in its 300 years or so of existence, being known as St Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad and then back to St Petersburg. Czars, revolutionaries, dictators and democrats have all left their mark on maps, signs, history books and now navigation systems throughout Russia and the former Soviet Union. In [...]

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Jim and I published a first take on the SuccessFactors deal with Siemens. Gartner clients see Siemens to Provide Important SaaS Talent Management Test Case (G00168920), 15-JUN-2009.
Last week I suddenly felt like one of those people you meet in IT who keep telling you that computing hasn’t really changed since punchcards or Fortran, and [...]

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