Giles Nelson

Why BPM should be on the CIO's agenda in 2010

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:54:00 GMT

Bringing order to chaos?

Last month, Gartner published predictions that suggested that modern business environments are more knowledge-based and unpredictable than ever before and need technology that can support this state of affairs (http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1278415). The current crop of Business Process Management (BPM) solutions have done a great job at taking existing processes, modelling them, finding optimisations and eliminating errors. However, the overarching promise of BPM - to introduce automation and make business processes more responsive - has not yet been realised.

Is 2010 the year of location-based services?

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:25:00 GMT

Locating the interest

In my opinion, one of the most interesting technology trends of 2010 promises to be location based services. These can be described as services that utilise a user or object's physical location to deliver relevant information. One example is the tracking of trucks or ships moving freight so customers can be informed more accurately about arrival times. Another is the delivery of a discount voucher to a mobile phone user as they walk past a store which stocks a product of interest.Location based services are not a new idea. In fact, 10 years ago there was a lot of hype around them, fuelled by the froth in the mobile telco market (remember the billions that were bid for UK 3G licenses?). I have to confess a very personal interest in them too, as they featured heavily in my PhD thesis, completed in 1998.In 2010 they're finally going to become mainstream. Why?It's all down to the rise of the smartphone. And specifically, the fact that most smartphones now have in-built GPS. Combined with always-on wireless connectivity, it means that applications running on these phones can report a user's current location on a regular basis.As GPS-equipped smartphone use has taken off, so the applications that use the location information have also begun to. Mapping is perhaps the most obvious - dynamically update a map, centred on the user's current location, as the user moves around. Very useful when you're trying to find the nearest outlet of your favourite coffee purveyor in an unfamiliar area. Photographs taken on smartphones can have latitude and longitude information encoded with them. So, photographs can be then combined with mapping information - perhaps someone has a good meal at a restaurant and wants to remember where the restaurant is. The addition of location information gives some extra context to the photograph making the event more memorable.

2010: Investment in innovation will be back

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:49:00 GMT

Five key technology trends set to shake up computing in 2010

We have recently seen the 1990s' dream of the application service provider (ASP) model become a reality in the form of cloud computing, as almost-ubiquitous connectivity opened up online services to companies and consumers. Virtualisation is helping save server space, as well as reducing operating costs and energy usage. Event-driven computing, pioneered in financial services, is now changing the way architectures are created in a wide variety of sectors, creating enormous efficiencies in service delivery; mobile computing is actually now an everyday reality for people.

Mapping the trends in APAC technology

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:15:00 GMT

Dr Giles Nelson, director of strategy at Progress Software, writes of his recent experiences in the Asia Pacific market

In many ways, Asia-Pac still looks to the West for innovation in business technology. There is often a perception that Western countries and firms are somehow ahead of their Eastern counterparts; often this perception is quite wrong. Without the legacy systems that often slow down US and European investment and innovation, organisations in the East are better placed to innovate and leapfrog ahead of slower moving competitors.