Category Archives: Technology

Best Design Trends of 2013? Don’t You Mean Worst, VentureBeat?

Of course the doctor is going to to be attracted to an article that purports to chronicle the 10 best design trends of 2013, but after a quick read, the doctor wonders if the author meant to say the trends mentioned were the worst trends because, as far as the doctor is concerned, the list contains four (4) of the worst design trends of the year. (An editing snafu, maybe?)

In no particular order, these four (4) trends are among the worst that 2013 had to offer.

  1. Responsive Design
    There’s no such thing as responsive design, at least not from a programmer’s perspective. The idea behind responsive design is that a single interface is coded to adapt to the viewing environment by using fluid, proportion-based grids, flexible images, and CSS3 media queries. While this sounds great in theory, this is impossible in practice as what looks good on a 5″ mobile touchscreen won’t look good on a 27″ monitor, nor will you be able to fit the same amount of information. In other words, you will have to code the UI to minimize, replace, or drop components as the screen size decreases from whatever the normal viewing size is taken to be (which is probably still 1366 * 788, based upon January 2013 statistics) and to add more components, more options, or more images as the screen size increases from the normal viewing size. You will have to have different scaling rules for images for different screen sizes (as some images will have to not only scale proportionally, but scale in multiples to look good, and only to a pre-set minimum and/or maximum size), return different amounts of data depending on display capability (and, if you can get an idea thereof, processing power), and even adapt the color scheme to the display characteristics. For every component, you end up needing so many rules, to account for mobile screen sizes, tablet screen sizes, laptop screen sizes, desktop screen sizes, and large monitor sizes, that it would have been less code, and less confusion, to just code five different designs. The theory sounds good but the practicality is virtually non-existent.
  2. Delight in Animation
    Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. The analogy is just because you can down 3 bottles of free vino before you pass out, this doesn’t mean you should. Animations are not only processor-intensive (which is an issue for mobile devices with limited battery life), but they are also bandwidth intensive. Just because the carriers have the capacity, this doesn’t mean the individual does, especially if she’s on the go. Cellular provider data plans are expensive and the last thing we want to do is run up tens of dollars in overage charges for your stupid animation. And yes, many places offer free wi-fi, but usually only have a single low-end 54 MB router that can’t really handle the amount of traffic all of the freeloaders are trying to route through it. Give us a nice graphic if you must, but don’t waste our dollars on frivolous animations.
  3. Creative Typography Explosion
    Some of us like to be able to read what you write and don’t want to spend 30 seconds trying to figure out if the word is ‘moot’ or ‘nook’ because your fancy-smancy psuedo-cursive type-front is so quirky and blurry we can’t differentiate u’s from v’s, a’s from o’s, t’s from k’s, and p’s from q’s. There are a large number of good, old fashioned, type-fronts that have been around for decades for a reason. They work. Use them.
  4. Dashboards
    Everyone should know better than to get the doctor started on this topic. I don’t know how many times I’ve told you that dashboards are dangerous and dysfunctional (which is a message I’ve been shouting from the rooftops since 20007)! Austin got the message. Why Can’t You? (Why do you need to find out for yourself that integrated dashboards are deadly or that dashboards will be your downfall.) Needless to say, the doctor is not pleased by the explosion thereof!

Got any of your own bad design trends of 2013 to share? Leave a comment!

The Best Supply Chain Security in the World is Useless …

… if you forget to lock the digital back door!

As Tim Garcia pointed out in a recent article over on Manufacturing Business Technology, “In Securing Your Supply Chain, Don’t Forget To Lock The Back Door”, because up to half of all reported company data breaches slip in through unguarded digital back doors. Just because you take all of the security precautions that are possible with your own network, this doesn’t mean that you can account for the practices of other companies your enterprise interacts with on a daily basis though digital backdoors that could be contained in every piece of enterprise technology that you use.

So what should you do? For starters, follow the advice in Tim’s article.

  1. Use up-to-date anti-virus and monitoring systems on all inbound and outbound connections.
    Whether it is between business systems at different locations, your SaaS and cloud providers, or third parties — protect all data links.
  2. Restrict all sensitive digital communications and transactions to secure, monitored, channels.
    Don’t allow sensitive data or monetary transactions to flow over unapproved, unsecured channels for any reason.
  3. Analyze every nook and cranny in your digital supply chain for vulnerability.
    Thieves and competitors will find the one digital pathway you miss or ignore in your vulnerability assessment.
  4. Communicate the Security Procedures and Protocols
    Make sure the entire C-Suite is aware, approves, and communicates them downward.
  5. Have a Recovery Plan
    Despite you best efforts, it only takes one newly discovered zero-day exploit or one employee who forgets to encrypt some critical data for thieves and spies to break into your network, steal your data (and your customers’ data), and put you in a bind. Have a plan to deal with the worst-case scenario as soon as it happens to minimize the losses to your bank account and your corporate reputation.

In addition, SI recommends

  1. Have harsh penalties for (repeat) offenders who do not follow the procedures.
    Just like some employees will continue to buy off-contract unless you have harsh penalties in place to curb this behaviour (such as no reimbursement without an approved PO signed by their supervisor and a Procurement executive, write-ups that negatively impact their performance review and maximum bonus, etc.), some employees will take shortcuts if they think its easier or quicker to do so or the security procedures are overkill.
  2. Look for systems where you can control the distribution of data seen by your suppliers.
    If the only way to restrict the data that is viewable by a user logged into one of your systems is to export it to Excel or PDF, and this is the primary mechanism used to share data with your suppliers, even if it’s sent encrypted, once the supplier decrypts it – you have no control. If, on the other hand, the system implements fine-grained security and you can create customized supplier views and restrict data exports, this limits what the supplier sees and its options for sharing that data. It’s even better if the supplier can create customized sub-views for the data it needs to share with one of its suppliers working on a part of the component it is building for you. Even though the military often goes crazy with its security measures (as anything on the public internet is not “protected” just because you print it off and put it in a binder), they have the right idea — sensitive data that is sent outside the four walls of the organization should be restricted to what is need to know.

Happy Birthday, John von Neumann

One hundred and ten years ago today, John von Neumann is born in Budapest, Hungary. von Neumann was the first to design a computer architecture in which the program and the data it operated on were both stored in the computer’s memory in the same address space, which to this day is the basis of computer design.

Without von Neumann, computers may not be so powerful, you might not have your iPads, and the sophistication of today’s enterprise technology could still be quite crude.

Good SaaS vs. Bad SaaS

A recent post over on Richard Anson’s blog on “11 Crucial Tactics for SaaS Pricing”, while written for new SaaS vendors who need to know how to price their solutions, did a great job of helping to point out some of the key elements of a good SaaS solution sales process vs. a bad SaaS solution sales process as well as some key elements of a good SaaS solution from a customer’s perspective vs. a bad SaaS solution from a customer’s perspective.

In particular, it focusses in on some of the key non-functional characteristics that should be examined in your SaaS purchase process. These non-functional characteristics can easily be summarized in a quick side-by-side comparison of good SaaS vs. bad SaaS.

 

Good SaaS Bad SaaS
Value-based Cost-based
ROI-justification Process Improvement
Business Case Justification Potential Manpower Reduction
Priced According to Company Size and Utilization One Price Fits All
Competitively Priced Priced Out of the Ballpark

 

In other words, if the SaaS solution is good, it will be competitively priced, and priced according to your company size and intended utilization, come with a business case justification, deliver a proven ROI, and clearly deliver ongoing value.

And if a SaaS solution is bad (for you), it will be priced out of the ball-park with respect to its competition (and be either too expensive to deliver value or too cheap for the company to sustain over the long term, which will lead either to the provider’s failure or substantial price increases at contract renewal time), have little in the way of a solid business case justification, or have a poor ROI over the short and/or long term. SaaS is more than features, functionality, hands-off management, and a cool web experience — it’s about delivering value to your bottom line.

For insights on how to cost out the TCO of a SaaS solution, and compare that TCO to an installed solution, see SI’s classic post on Uncovering the True Cost of On-Premise Sourcing & Procurement Software. For insights on what constitutes a good SaaS contract, see SI’s classic posts on SaaS Contractual Considerations (Part I and Part II). And remember, as per SI’s recent post on Maximizing ROI from Technology, it doesn’t matter how strategic the IT Vendor is, it only matters how strategic the solution they offer is.