Well it finally happened – Neil and I became internationally published authors! Check out this link and what you see is a Russian version of Smart (Enough) Systems, the book on Decision Management we published a little while back. If any of my readers are Russian speakers and get hold of a copy in the coming weeks, please let me know. It would be fun to hear from someone who read it in a different language.

The title of this post, by the way, comes from the Yahoo Babel Fish translation of the Russian

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, been a busy week one way and another.

Ade McCormack, author of The IT Value Stack (reviewed previously) and columnist at the FT in England, just reviewed the book for this blog. You can read his review of Smart (Enough) Systems over on his blog.

Neil and I wrote a column introducing enterprise decision management (EDM) for Teradata Magazine recently and you can find it here.

The folks at Intalio invited us to speak at their user conference June 17-18. We are presenting on Applying Decision Management to Make Processes Smarter, Simpler and More Agile on the first day. We would love to see you there so drop by and say hello if you are attending. Also we have a discount code if you are interested in attending – drop me a line (james at smartenoughsystems.com) and I’ll hook you up. We should have signed copies of the book for sale too.

Rich Lechner of IBM came next, talking about the new enterprise and it’s new enterprise data center. Supporting business innovation is impacted, he said, by three things:

• Globalization
  The change from an exporter to a multi-country set of counties to a truly globally integrated enterprise – tapping into new talent pools around the world.
• Rising tide of information
  More and more information from many things including proliferating devices (especially those connected to the internet) and the focus has been on controlling and managing this. But real time data streaming, real-time analytics and bi-direction information are coming now and you must find a way to use this information.
• Business model changes
  Many new B2B and B2C business models empowered by the internet and ubiquitous access. But Social networking and mobile devices will continue to force new business models.

At the same time IT has to deliver operations to support the current business and adopt new technologies like cloud computing, web 2.0, SaaS and more. The bottom line remains delivering a great experience with unbounded scale – no upper limit, cloud computing. This is what an IT department must deliver to support innovation – massively scalable, on demand computing – and doing so can allow resources to be moved from operations to innovation. They see three steps:

1. Simplified – driving IT efficiency
2. Shared – rapid deployment of new infrastructure and services
3. Dynamic – responsive and goal-driven

The world, he says, is fundamentally changing. Enterprises don’t have borders, unbounded infrastructure and data that is real time and bi-directional. Collaboration is key and IT can (and should) enable this.

Tony, over on the Decision Support Analytics blog, is running an interesting competition and the prizes have just improved – Neil and I offered a signed copy of our book to add to his list of potential prizes. You can check out the details here. I plan to write a couple of entries soon and I encourage any of you who blog to do likewise. Details of how to enter are here.

Two of Gartner’s smartest analysts – Kurt Schlegel and Gareth Herschel (shameless plug) – just published an excellent little paper called “Business Intelligence and Decision Making“. This paper was one of Gartner’s Strategic Planning Assumptions and the (free) summary says:

A subset of organizations that seek a competitive advantage will evolve the primary role of their business intelligence and performance management initiatives to ensure that decision making is made a core competency across the company.

I particularly liked the paper’s focus on decisions at multiple levels – not just big, adhoc decisions but also the repetitive, operational decisions on which Neil and I focus – and the recognition that this is a stretch for those used to the current BI mindset. At only $95 the report is great value and you should buy it if you are not already a Gartner subscriber (and read it if you are).

Regular readers of this blog (and those who have read the book) will know how Neil and I think about this and how we like a focus on decisions and decision management rather than BI’s historical focus on data, aggregation and reporting.

The one thing I will give away from the report is it’s recommended reading list:

• Smart (Enough) Systems – our book – read about it here or buy it on amazon.com
• Competing on Analytics – Tom Davenport’s book (reviewed here)
• Super Crunchers – Ian Ayre’s very readable book on data mining (reviewed here)
• Moneyball – Michael Lewis’ classic on baseball and statistics

Enjoy the paper, take its recommendations (especially the one about buying our book).

The current issue of BPM Strategies magazine has a Q&A on decision management – check out the online version of the magazine (members of the BPM Institute only).

CS TechCast is a podcast series released every Monday hosted by Eric Johnson, Eric Beehler, and Josh Jones. Each week they discuss the latest Information Technology trends and news, and bring you interviews with key members of the IT Community. This week they included a nice little interview with me and Neil about Smart (enough) Systems. Enjoy it here.

Next month (February 24th – 26th), I am going to be attending ILOG’s user conference:

I will be introducing and acting as host for a couple of sessions on best practices and giving a lunch and learn on Tuesday. I will be there the whole time, blogging from the BRMS track so look me up if you are there. There will be a chance to win the book and we’ll have some for sale (though you can buy it on the about the book page now if you like).

You can register for the event here.