Technospeak: I have tried to figure out ASP vs SaaS, well here it is

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

Broadly speaking, SaaS application maturity can be expressed using a model with four distinct levels. Each level is distinguished from the previous one by the addition of one of the three attributes listed above.

Level I: Ad Hoc/Custom (this is a typical ASP hosted model)

The first level of maturity is similar to the traditional application service provider (ASP) model of software delivery, dating back to the 1990s. At this level, each customer has its own customized version of the hosted application, and runs its own instance of the application on the host's servers. Architecturally, software at this maturity level is very similar to traditionally-sold line-of-business software, in that different clients within an organization connect to a single instance running on the server, but that instance is wholly independent of any other instances or processes that the host is running on behalf of its other customers.

Typically, traditional client–server applications can be moved to a SaaS model at the first level of maturity, with relatively little development effort, and without re-architecting the entire system from the ground up. Although this level offers few of the benefits of a fully mature SaaS solution, it does allow vendors to reduce costs by consolidating server hardware and administration.

Level II: Configurable (this is a typical on demand model)

At the second level of maturity, the vendor hosts a separate instance of the application for each customer (or tenant). Whereas in the first level each instance is individually customized for the tenant, at this level, all instances use the same code implementation, and the vendor meets customers' needs by providing detailed configuration options that allow the customer to change how the application looks and behaves to its users. Despite being identical to one another at the code level, each instance remains wholly isolated from all the others.

Moving to a single code base for all of a vendor's customers greatly reduces a SaaS application's service requirements, because any changes made to the code base can be easily provided to all of the vendor's customers at once, thereby eliminating the need to upgrade or slipstream individual customized instances. However, repositioning a traditional application as SaaS at the second maturity level can require significantly more re-architecting than at the first level, if the application has been designed for individual customization rather than configuration metadata.

Similarly to the first maturity level, the second level requires that the vendor provide sufficient hardware and storage to support a potentially large number of application instances running concurrently.

Level III: Configurable, Multi-Tenant Architecture (this is the 1st generation SaaS model)

At the third level of maturity, the vendor runs a single instance that serves every customer, with configurable metadata providing a unique user experience and feature set for each one. Authorization and security policies ensure that each customer's data is kept separate from that of other customers; and, from the end user's perspective, there is no indication that the application instance is being shared among multiple tenants.

This approach eliminates the need to provide server space for as many instances as the vendor has customers, allowing for much more efficient use of computing resources than the second level, which translates directly to lower costs. A significant disadvantage of this approach is that the scalability of the application is limited. Unless partitioning is used to manage database performance, the application can be scaled only by moving it to a more powerful server (scaling up), until diminishing returns make it impossible to add more power cost-effectively.

Level IV: Scalable, Configurable, Multi-Tenant Architecture (this is a highly scalable, mature SaaS model)

At the fourth and final level of maturity, the vendor hosts multiple customers on a load-balanced farm of identical instances, with each customer's data kept separate, and with configurable metadata providing a unique user experience and feature set for each customer. A SaaS system is scalable to an arbitrarily large number of customers, because the number of servers and instances on the back end can be increased or decreased as necessary to match demand, without requiring additional re-architecting of the application, and changes or fixes can be rolled out to thousands of tenants as easily as a single tenant.

Authors:

Frederick Chong and Gianpaolo Carraro
Microsoft Corporation

read it here at:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/aa479069.aspx

April 2006

Great Book: "Mobilizing Minds" the topic is Organizational Talent

Written by McKinsey principals Bryan and Joyce...So here is my synopsis or understanding of the subject matter presented...

Organizational design is today's key to unlocking the opportunities of the 21^s century…Why? It's all about mind power!

Companies can consciously design and build organizational interventions that can dramatically improve their ability to ‘mobilize mind power’ - to create greater wealth in the organization. The size of the potential opportunity (to build greater wealth and profits) justifies that the CEO and top-tier leadership devote a large % of their total capacity to this intervention. Today’s corporations are now under-performers as they struggle again to adopt to the new global business environment. Why is this? The authors discuss this further...

Most Organizations Still Operate Under Old Organizational Models-

The goal is to free talented people from the unproductive complexity that has been designed into today’s corporate organizational model.This unproductive complexity is a function of the organizational model being used today, but that was designed for the industrial revolution of the early 1920’s, not for today’s digital age or 21^st century technology.

So, what causes this unproductive complexity?

Vertical Hierarchies create a traffic jam or organizational gridlock...these result in organizational constraints Silos create impenetrable walls that block collaboration and the flow of individual intellectual property (IIP). Then, the idea of horizontal matrices was developed to circumvent the existing hierarchies, this resulted in more managers, more reporting, more agendas and convoluted relationships. Add to this, intermediate layers within an organization such that the front line and front office are so far apart they never engage, reducing opportunities to collaborate, demobilizing mind power.

Most People In The Workforce Today Want New Organizational Models -

Today, the majority of workers are ‘thinking-intensive’ people vs. labor intensive people. Look at how students come into the working world relying upon social networking sites for their life style. Here they define thinking intensive workers as those that apply the use of subjective judgment and problem solving (intangibles) techniques to produce greater efficiency, scale and wealth. Labor intensive workers rely upon the application of labor, capital, energy, materials (tangibles) to produce greater efficiency, scale. It is easy to understand how our workforce has changed!

Intangibles in the 21st Century are the source of wealth production since the production of tangibles is being constrained by the environment, resource restrictions, global competition, rising wages, lower standards of living, etc.

By enabling 'the liberation of talented people' from dysfunctional organizations, releasing the organizational complexity, it seems possible to harness the collective latent mind power. The authors go on to explore in detail 9 different means of attaining the goal.

Find it on Amazon here:

http://www.amazon.com/Mobilizing-Minds-Creating-Century-Organization/dp/0071490825

Great Read on High Potential Employees- Why You Need Them to Stay

Retaining High Potentials

by Norman Schippers (Talent Management Magazine)

According to a recent study by the Society for Human Resource Management, 12 percent of the workforce, on average, voluntarily resigned January through August 2006.

More-current statistics do not look any more promising — a February 2007 survey by Salary.com revealed that nearly 66 percent of tenured employees (people who have been in their positions for three to 10 years) plan to look for a new job in the next three months.

The threat of increased turnover is grabbing the attention of management, as well as human resources. The productivity costs of losing 12 percent of your workforce is certainly enough for companies to take action, but when combined with the financial and market impact, addressing retention issues quickly escalates to the top of upper management's priority list.

Studies show employee turnover can cost companies up to 40 percent of their annual profit. That's for the turnover of all employees, regardless of their performance levels. The financial impact of losing a significant number of high- potential employees (those who have been identified as your future leaders) can be exponentially higher.

to access the complete article online, go to :

http://www.talentmgt.com/succession_planning/2007/August/394/index.php

How Does a Best Practice become Better?

The notion of a best practice is not new. Frederick Taylor (1919)^[1] said as much nearly 100 years ago: “among the various methods and implements used in each element of each trade there is always one method and one implement which is quicker and better than any of the rest”. This viewpoint came to be known as the "one best way" (Kanigel, 1997)^[2].

History, however, is filled with examples of people who were unwilling to accept the industry standard as the best way to do anything. The enormous technological changes since the Industrial Revolutions in England and the United States bear witness to this fact. For example, at one time horses were considered the 'best' form of transportation, even after 'horse-less carriages' were invented. Today, most people drive a gasoline, diesel, or bio-fuel vehicle—itself an improvement on the horse-less carriage.

In real-world application, Best Practice is a very useful concept. Despite the need to improve on processes as times change and things evolve, Best Practice is considered by some as a business buzzword used to describe the process of developing and following a standard way of doing things that multiple organizations can use for management, policy, and especially software systems.

Best Practices are commonly used in many Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Marketing Operations Management (MOM) systems. A Best Practice can be selected (generally from several competing options) and defined within a computer system. Then, any organization performing similar tasks can draw from the same procedure, and theoretically improve their operations.

Human Resources is one example of Best Practices as implemented in MOM systems. There are numerous standard procedures defined when managing an organisation's employees, volunteers, and contractors. By choosing a "Best Practice" or standard way of organizing and performing processes, the makers of MOM systems or Human Resource Management (HRM) system software are able to produce systems that can be used by multiple organisations.

Because such systems are restrictive by nature, implementing Best Practices by using such software may force organizations who have less formally defined procedures to conform to a single standard. Deviation from this standard may require a change to the software. Avoiding these related costs may be a motivating factor in choosing to conform.

Newly discovered Best Practices and changing industry standards often heavily influence ERP/MOM/HRM system design. Recent pressures on companies to change quickly in emerging global marketplaces have forced many vendors to be more flexible in how Best Practices are defined and implemented

Remember, today's Best practices continually evolve

Where did the Likert Scale come from?

The American educator and organizational psychologist Rensis Likert (pronounced 'Lick-urt') (1903–1981) is best known for his research on management styles.

He developed Likert Scales and the Linking pin model.

A Likert scale (pronounced 'lick-urt') is a type of psychometric response scale often used in questionnaires, and is the most widely used scale in survey research. When responding to a Likert questionnaire item, respondents specify their level of agreement to a statement. The scale is named after Rensis Likert, who published a report describing its use (Likert, 1932).

Sample Question presented using a five-point Likert Scale

A typical test item in a Likert scale is a statement. The respondent is asked to indicate his or her degree of agreement with the statement or any kind of subjective or objective evaluation of the statement. Traditionally a five-point scale is used, however many psychometricians advocate using a seven or nine point scale.

Ice cream is good for breakfast

1. Strongly disagree
2. Disagree
3. Neither agree nor disagree
4. Agree
5. Strongly agree

Likert scaling is a bipolar scaling method, measuring either positive or negative response to a statement. Sometimes a four-point scale is used; this is a forced choice method since the middle option of "Neither agree nor disagree" is not available. Likert scales may be subject to distortion from several causes. Respondents may avoid using extreme response categories (central tendency bias); agree with statements as presented (acquiescence bias); or try to portray themselves or their organization in a more favorable light (social desirability bias).

Why is web 2.0 different?

Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to Web technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the web as a platform. According to Tim O'Reilly, "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."

Check out this video on YouTube that shows you which sites utilize web 2.0 capabilities at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsa5ZTRJQ5w

Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2003^[1] and popularized by the first Web 2.0 conference in 2004^[2] , refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. O'Reilly Media titled a series of conferences around the phrase, and it has since become widely adopted.

Who is Donald Kirkpatrick and why are there 4 levels?

Donald Kirkpatrick is known for creating the training evaluation model. This model consists of four levels of learning evaluation. Kirkpatrick's ideas were first published in 1959, in a series of articles in the US Training and Development Journal.

The four levels of Kirkpatrick's evaluation model essentially measure:

• reaction of student - what they thought and felt about the training
• learning - the resulting increase in knowledge or capability
• behaviour - extent of behaviour and capability improvement and implementation/application
• results - the effects on the business or environment resulting from the trainee's performance

For more on Kirkpatrick's Four Levels of Evaluation, see this wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Kirkpatrick