Oracle Acquires Instantis For Cloud-Based Portfolio Project Management

Oracle has entered into an agreement to acquire Instantis, a project portfolio management (PPM) technology vendor. Instantis offers both on-premises and cloud-based versions of its PPM solutions.

Instantis’ main product, known as Enterprise Track, is designed to ease the management of multiple corporate initiatives by providing a single interface for management of all projects for all players. The solution uses a “top-down” approach that approaches initiatives starting from high-level strategies, metrics and processes, and also offers financial reporting capabilities.

Oracle says it intends to combine Instantis functionality with its Primavera PPM toolset and Fusion middleware application. As a result, Oracle expects to offer a more comprehensive PPM package with both cloud-based and on-premises hosting options. The platform will connect executive leadership with departments including corporate, professional services, IT, R&D, manufacturing, operations and capital projects for the purposes of integrated PPM execution. Specific enabled PPM tasks will include capacity planning, business metrics tracking, ideation and contract execution.

Oracle ‘Bulks Up’ Cloud

In its coverage of today’s acquisition, the Wall Street Journal focused on the cloud computing aspect of the deal far more than the added PPM functionality Oracle will obtain. “The company is nevertheless aggressively targeting cloud-computing rivals like Salesforce.com and SAP AG with its own suite of products served up through the Internet,” stated the Journal. The Journal also commented that buying Instantis reflects Oracle’s “longstanding strategy of sucking in small (niche) software companies on a steady basis.”

Keeping It Small

The “longstanding strategy” of buying small niche players referred to in the Journal article appears to be sticking around for a while. As reported by CMSWire, about a month ago Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told CNBC's Maria Bartiromo that now that Oracle has moved into the cloud, the company will focus more on growing internally and less on buying up other vendors.

"I am just saying over the next couple of years, senior management down to individual programmers and sales people, are focused on one thing; selling applications in the cloud," said Ellison, who clarified in other remarks that Oracle in particular would not focus on large acquisitions. Instantis does offer Oracle new opportunities to sell niche PPM applications and services in the cloud, so this purchase appears to be right on track.

Let’s see if Ellison keeps his word about not pursuing earth-ratting acquisitions in 2013, especially as the economy is showing signs of a possible early recovery in the works.

The Instantis management team and employees are expected to join Oracle as part of the Oracle Primavera Global Business Unit. Notable Instantis clients include DuPont, Lilly and Verizon.The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and approvals and is expected to close this year. Terms have not been released.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Weekend Reading: Collaboration Needs Trust

Working collaboratively involves a leap of faith. You enter into a project hoping that everyone will not only carry his or her part of the workload, but will work together to make the project come to fruition. 

Trust came up in quite a few of our features this week. Always a necessity, it is becoming more of a challenge as the number of people working remotely increases. 

What can companies do to foster trust? Are there any tools that help? Read on to find the answers.

The People and Tools to See it Through

Developing Trust in the Digital Workplace

Sharon O'Dea (@sharonodea): In offices the world over, a quiet revolution is underway. The costs of technology have fallen, the quality of social platforms vastly improved, and senior management attitudes have changed; after many years when it was simply an aspiration, or a buzzword, the digital workplace is fast becoming a reality.  

To Socialize Organizations, Socialize Executives

Rachel Happe (@rhappe): 2012 has been a year of uncertainty. The economy is slowly improving, but with fits and starts and the recent IMF report confirms that the global economy is not beyond a dramatic meltdown. Close elections in the U.S. have everyone holding their breath until we know what direction the political winds are blowing. And technology continues its rapid pace of change, disrupting how we work, connect and collaborate. 

Enterprise Collaboration in 2012: The Good, The Bad, The …

Kevin Conroy (@seattlerooster): When I got word that CMSWire’s editorial focus for the month of October would be “enterprise collaboration and communication,” I immediately smiled, as this in itself showed some real progress for our industry. There’s no doubt journalists covering our space will continue to talk about “social business” and the “social enterprise” for some time to come (I’ve used this phrasing myself more than once), but “enterprise collaboration and communication” really cuts more to the chase of what I think we’re all trying to do here, which is to improve communication and productivity within the enterprise.  

Rethinking the Intranets: Teaching an Old Tool New Tricks

Maria Ogneva (@themaria): The world is changing fast; even the nature of change itself has changed, says futurist Thornton May. Many corporate systems are holdovers from a time when things changed less frequently, everything was more predictable, and content was created by a few and consumed by many. Corporate intranet gets a bad rap; but it’s just a perfectly good tool designed yesterday and being used by today’s jobs. You wouldn’t check out a book at a library to respond to a tweet from a customer, would you?

Social Reconnects Enterprise Search

Julie Hunt (@juliebhunt): Enterprise Search continues to go through transformations to improve its usefulness for all employees, since information is common currency for practically everyone in every organization.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Wrike Debuts Live, Project Management Tool with Real-Time Collaborative Text Editor, Email Sync

Project management system Wrike has debuted a new collaborative editing platform called Wrike Live. The new platform offers real-time shared editing of documents and tasks to keep teams on task and in the loop, so to speak. Here's what you need to know.

Modern Tools for Teams Large + Small

Online collaboration tools are key to a business's success, and one of the best features of Wrike Live is how well it syncs up with email. Wrike Live can turn emails into project timelines (illustrated in a Gantt chart format). Email a task to someone and cc it to wrike@wrike.com — the task will automatically be added to the project plan and displayed in chart format. It's a nice visualization that is easy to understand and process.

Wrike's Dynamic Timeline feature is a handy tool for managing tasks.

Wrike Live features a simultaneous co-authoring tool for teams working together on any project. There's no saving, no refreshing and all participants see updates as they happen. That goes for document collaboration as well as tasks and projects, something Wrike says is a first in market feature.

Furthermore, Wrike debuted its Activity Stream that displays a three-pane view to navigate between a live overview of project updates, details of a task and a project's structure. In this shared workspace, people can share files and images, discuss work and see each others' actions. The Wrike team likens it to feeling the pulse of a project.

Activity Stream shows an overview of a project and all the updates needed to stay on top of things.

Don't Forget the Cloud

There's a 30-day free trial of Wrike available, and the full release package for teams of 50 or more is US$ 200 per month. That allows for unlimited projects and collaborators and 100 gigabytes of storage. From there, prices range down to US$ 50 per month for up to 5 users.

Additionally, Wrike is available as a Google App for syncing even more workflow items. We posted a video below to demonstrate the real time updates of Wrike Live. There's no audio, so don't be surprised when you press play and it's silent.

 For more on project collaboration, check out this recent CMSWire article.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

What's New in Project Management with SharePoint and Project Server 2013

The recent beta of SharePoint 2013 brought with it a new version of its sister product: Project Server 2013. Project Server is built on top of SharePoint, and is designed to extend the capabilities of Microsoft Project for large scale enterprise project management.

Project Server 2013 brings with it several new features. Most obvious of all is adoption of the new Windows 8 UI, as seen in SharePoint 2013. One of the biggest functional changes is the integration with Office 365, now that Project Online is part of Microsoft’s cloud offering.

The new Azure Workflow Server, a big part of SharePoint 2013, also makes an appearance here. This does mean any existing workflows will be incompatible and need rebuilding. However it also means users now have the option of creating workflows directly in SharePoint Designer 2013 and deploying them to Project Server.

Reporting has also seen a raft of new features. Chief among them is support for oData feeds, meaning Project Server data can now be accessed via URL. This should provide a lot more flexibility for solutions in the future.

Smaller Scale Project Management

Project Server is a fully featured product, but one that can prove too much for some organizations. SharePoint 2013 features a brand new Project Site template that can be used for smaller scale project management activities. Site information, such as tasks, can be aggregated to a specific user's MySite, and the sites can be used in complete isolation of Project Server if required. If later Project Server integration is required, than tasks from the project sites can be pulled across.

Of course you could just use standard SharePoint features to manage your projects. SharePoint features task lists, Gannt views, site templates and custom lists — all of which can be used to create your own bespoke project management tool.

Third Party Add Ons

As you would expect with the SharePoint community, numerous third party products also exist that attempt to improve on SharePoint’s inherent usefulness as a project management tool.

Bamboo Solutions are well known as one of the biggest suppliers of web parts and add ins for SharePoint. As you would expect they have a number of products aimed at helping project managers. These range from simple web parts to fully featured "solution accelerators."

One of their most popular web parts is the "Task Master" (US$ 1495), a turbo charged replacement for the standard SharePoint task list. Those familiar with Microsoft Project will recognize the Gantt timeline display, task properties (start and end dates, resources, predecessors, etc.) and color coded views.

Task management is obviously a huge part of any project manager's day to day job. Task Master provides all the tools to manage tasks (and resources, and in fact whole project plans) directly with SharePoint. Whilst expensive for a single web part, it is a fully featured configurable component that many will find extremely useful.

Another useful tool, fulfilling a slightly different purpose, is the "RiskMatrix" webpart from TeamImprover (US$ 200). This lightweight tool focuses, as the name suggests, on managing and displaying risks. A risk log or matrix is now a recommended part of many modern project management methodologies, especially when dealing with larger/more expensive projects. The reason given is that highlighting risks as early as possible gives the best possible chance of dealing with them successfully.

RiskMatrix is a simple but effective tool, using standard SharePoint lists to enter risks, and assign them high/med/low Impact and Probability scores. A bright graphical, color-coded matrix is then created, clearly indicating areas for immediate concern — red risks being bad. The component’s simplicity makes it an ideal candidate to work alongside other similar products, or as part of a user's own Project Management dashboard.

Editor's Note: Chris has written before about what to expect with SharePoint 2013:

—  Microsoft Doesn't Advise You Customize SharePoint 2013 

About the Author

Chris Wright is the founder of the Scribble Agency, a technology copywriting agency based in London. He writes extensively on SharePoint, web trends, and general IT topics, both in print and on the web. He is also a feature writer for Web Designer magazine and SmartPhone Essentials, and a regular contributor to nothingbutSharePoint and CMSWire.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Progress Report: A Car That Flies

Project: Terrafugia's Transition Aircraft

The Transition is meant to fly below 10,000 feet, which is one-fourth the cruising altitude of commercial aircraft.

Thesis
Private aviation often plays victim to bad weather and hefty storage and maintenance fees. If light aircraft could double as road vehicles, pilots would have a more practical, safer way to fly.

Method
The Transition has wings that extend and retract electronically, allowing it to take to the air and then drive home from the airstrip on city streets (where it can hit 65 mph and gets 35 mpg). Says Terrafugia CEO and CTO Carl Dietrich: "People like to call it a flying car, but it's really a street-legal airplane."

Materials
FAA standards require the Transition to weigh under 1,000 pounds when unoccupied. Carbon fiber and titanium, used for the fuselage and frame, have a higher strength-to-weight ratio than steel or aluminum.

Most folding wings have locking pins that slide into holes, but those are prone to debris buildup. Instead, the Transition uses more-advanced rotating linkages that, when flush against the aircraft body, easily signal that wings are locked and ready for takeoff. A parachute system lives in the Transition's nose. "Say you're over mountainous terrain where you can't land," Dietrich says. "A handle in the cockpit will deploy a chute to get you down safely--though it may destroy the plane." Results The MIT-trained team behind Terrafugia first flew a proof-of-concept model in 2009, successfully completing 28 takeoffs and landings. Now Terrafugia is eyeing the personal aircraft market presently dominated by the Cessna Skycatcher, a two-seater plane that doesn't double as any other kind of vehicle.

Despite its shortcomings, the Transition does solve one of the biggest barriers to personal aviation: high storage costs. It fits neatly into a standard home garage, saving owners up to $1,500 a month on the cost of a hanger. It also puts to good use the U.S.'s 5,200 public-access airports, most of which see too little traffic to justify car-rental kiosks or cab lines.

Remaining Challenges
1. Pass future flight and drive tests.
"We have to do things during testing that no pilot in their right mind would do," Dietrich says. The Transition is designed for casual cruising, but upcoming tests include aggressive acrobatics.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

SharePoint Business Governance Strategy: Human Forces

You can't run a SharePoint project and expect it to be maintenance free. You need to have an organization, both during and after the project.

Clarification of Human Forces

When I started thinking of forces I found two parts of the word that interested me: First I was thinking of military forces: a group of humans working together to achieve a common goal. 

The second thought I had was about Star Wars (the movies), where human “jedis” with special skills/forces can do wonders to save the galaxy. It’s the same at work: humans with lots of different great skills work together to achieve common goals.

Humans, well that’s you, me and the rest of the people on this planet. ;-)

When I say human forces I sometimes refer to governance support groups and governance owner/s. But also all other people that may be involved one way or another.

Organization

I will give you two examples of organizations that should be formed during the early parts of a project and continue to exist after the first project is completed.

Governance Management Model

The management model is simple.

The governance team works together with the business to manage business needs and objectives to deliver ROI. They also work with IT to maintain IT alignment, maintenance and support.

The Governance Organization works on the SharePoint Service to support the operational governance. IT works on the SharePoint Service to manage the technical aspects and development.

Cross collaboration between business and IT is not recommended, as it will create conflicts at the decision level.

Two Ways to View Organization

There are two ways to view Organization; the first way is the traditional line management view. The second is to view organization by responsibility.

Traditional Organization

What you can see below is an example of how a governance organization could look. Let me explain this top down.

Business advisory group and SharePoint Center Of Excellence

These groups are normally professional consultants or similar. They will help both the business steering committee and the governance owners when they need to.

Business steering committee

The business steering committee is in a medium/large organizational  group that is mixed with cross-organization management.

They need to be at a high level in the company so they can define and take decisions on, outcome effect targets, strategies and budget. They are also responsible to decide if the projects will deliver business value or not. Risk minimization and high-level communication management are also part of their job.

The business steering committee needs to be very active in a SharePoint project if the outcome is to deliver value and ROI.

In a small organization the business steering committee and the governance owners can be the same group or person.

Some key responsibilities that the committee should have:

• Goals & Objectives
• Outcome effect targets
• Business “Value”
• Strategy
• Budget
• Risk minimization
• Communication responsible

Governance Owners/s

To me a governance owner is a person or a group of people that has very broad knowledge. Not just solution knowledge, but more important, an excellent understanding about the business and how it is run. I know that finding a person like this can be hard, so the alternative option could be to have a governance owners group.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Solving Problems with Authority and Sharing: Developments and Prospects #saa12

The Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC) project is an ambitious one that seeks to locate records of historical importance across repositories and make them available to patrons on a massive scale. Our panel updated us on its fascinating progress. Look at what we records and information management professionals can do.

The Society of American Archivists (SAA) 2012 annual meeting, “Beyond Borders," concluded Saturday, August 11, 2012 in San Diego.

Tammy Peters of the Smithsonian Institute introduced her panel:

• Ray R. Larson (University of California, Berkeley)
• Daniel Pitti (University of Virginia, Institute for Advanced Technology in Humanities) 
• Jerry Simmons (National Archives and Records Administration).

The Social Networks and Archival Context Project: Status Report

Ray R. Larson

Mr. Larson delivered an update to SNAC. Officially, the goals of the project are to further the transformation of archival description and to separate description of records from description of people documented in them. Translation: the project is meant to make available records of historical importance and

• enhance access to archives resources, through all cultural heritage resources; and
• enhance understanding of those resources.

We’re talking big data. With a sample of 150,000 EAD-encoded finding aids contributed from around the world by national libraries and others, including:

• Library of Congress
• National Archives and Records Administration
• Smithsonian Institution
• British Library
• Archives nationales (France)
• Bibliothèque nationale de France
• OCLC WorldCat and VIAF 
• Getty Vocabulary Program.

Institutes like the Getty Vocabulary Program have contributed a union list of artist names (make that: 293,000 personal and corporate names).

The problem: a proliferation of the forms of names (for example, different people with the same names). EAD records are full of family names and within the structure it notes the creator of the archive (typically the complete autobiography is provided). This autobiography is extracted to the Encoded Archival Context for Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families records (EAC-CPF) record.

We’re given names — sometimes multiple names. Identical names means a complete Library of Congress record with attributes is available. If it’s an exact match, it’s marked. But marking doesn’t work for everything. Abbreviations are troublesome — think transliteration of non-roman characters. We take names where we didn’t get an exact match, then test against library authority files. Do we find an exact match? We flag it as a potential merge. Is nothing matched by this stage? We create overlapping segments of three characters. Finally, we take all flagged as potential matches, do a find, make sure these are the ones we want. With the authoritative form of the name, we combine all EAC-CPF records. To give you an idea of volume, a recent test merged 93,033 person names from 114,639 person records," said Larson

In other words, the names are extracted from EAC-CPF and from existing EAD. If the EAC-CPF records match against one another and against existing authority records (for example, VIAF), then prototypes of historical resources and accessibility are created.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Can Mindy Kaling's 1.8 Million Twitter Followers Make Her New Sitcom A Hit?

Fox is betting her online popularity will translate to viewership for The Mindy Project. Here, Mindy takes us through a day of social media.

Photo by Jeff Minton

The Office was, until he left, Steve Carell's show. And he maintains an A-list career. Mindy Kaling, who writes for the show and plays Kelly, may not have the same star power--but on Twitter, where she's far more active than Carell, she's rewarded in kind: She has triple the followers (1.8 million versus 650,000 in July) and actively engages others (76% of her tweets include an @mention, versus 17% for Carell). Not that it's a competition. But as networks weigh actors' social potential, it's no wonder she's been given her own Fox vehicle, The Mindy Project.

Mindy Says...

A slice of social media wisdom...in 140 characters.

"Twitter is so short, it's safe. I don't want my bosses to be like, "Hey, your script is due and we saw you wrote four blog pages."

"People take things at face value on social media. Earnestness is the assumption."

"I don't know--maybe two-thirds of my followers are spambots."

"Twitter is basically a more playful way to text a friend."

"I don't actually know if any people care about a specific tweet of mine, but I have fun."

The network hasn't assigned her social marching orders yet, but she heaps praise on Joe Earley, its head of marketing and communications. "He was the one who made New Girl available for download a week before it aired," she says. "It was extremely smart. He knows the power of social media and how it can help a show."

Kaling didn't join Twitter to hawk her stuff; she was just coming up with jokes and too lazy to grab a notebook. And she's since decided that the best promotion is no promotion. "People don't want to listen to a celebrity tweeting about their charities and shows," she says. "That's why comedy writers do well--we put out little funny ideas." She took us through a day (Thursday, June 21) of @MindyKaling.

7:35 A.M.

Seeking a Movie For The End Of The World. So excited to see @SteveCarell in brilliant @Lorene­Scafaria's new movie.
Kaling was lying on the floor in her gym clothes, procrastinating. Then she remembered her friends' movie. "I never tweet about something if I really don't like it," she says. "I'd rather have a friend annoyed at me than do that, because it just feels like a lie."

7:58 a.m.

It's a jog-to-Drake's-Best-I-Ever-Had 11 times in a row kinda morning I guess
After going on a run, she tweeted a nod to fans who read her book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns). It had a bit about exercising with one song on repeat. "When you listen to one song 12 times in a row you seem like you're getting pumped up to, like, murder the president or something," she says.

Follow Fast Company's roadmap to social media: surefire rules, data, and expert wisdom guaranteed to show why this market is completely unpredictable.

9:04 A.M.

Did you hear about the awesome new Aaron Sorkin/Rihanna collaboration? it's called "Walk That Talk" and it is amazing you guys
Twitter followers love recognizing celebs' interests: It's like a formula to what makes someone tick. Kaling says this joke hit two big, recurring topics for her: TV writing and urban music. "I was almost trembling with how excited I was for this incredibly stupid pun," she says. And bonus: Brooklyn Decker retweeted it. "That made me feel cool," she says.

7:18 P.M.

@KenTremendous @sepinwall and Mike's impression of the kid in Amish in the City made us retrofit a character for him to play on the show!
Office producer Mike Schur and TV critic Alan Sepinwall had been tweeting at each other, and brought in Kaling. "Then I got into a little sentimental journey," she says. (This is from that exchange.) As celebrities know, fans aren't the only ones who appreciate access.

9:16 P.M.

Hey @JeremyBronson sorry I screamed so much on the Transformers ride.
The writers' computers at The Mindy Project went down for 45 minutes, so the team went next door to Universal Studios. After, Kaling sent this to a fellow writer. She prefers Twitter to just about any medium, even for personal notes. "When Jimmy Fallon had released his head monologue writer [Bronson] to come and work on this show, I thanked Jimmy on Twitter. A note sent personally is very classy, but to say it in front of a lot of people, I think, has an even nicer meaning because I'm acknowledging it publicly."

9:17 P.M.

"@sethmeyers21: @mindykaling You've learned Hollywood's most important lesson - Don't let @ikebarinholtz order pizza." Matt and I fired him
Every TV show has characters, and Kaling's Twitter feed needs characters as well. Her writers--especially Ike Barinholtz (best known as Ivan Dochenko from Eastbound and Down)--fill that role, because she's mostly tweeting from the writer's room. In this case, she says, "Fast food is hugely important in the life of a comedy writer. All we do is order in, and what we're going to eat is hotly debated."

9:31 P.M.

Don't worry @davidstassen your job is safe. Wanna be writing partners with Josh Meyers?
It's late on Thursday--pretty much the cliff for Twitter, which a Bitly study finds is most trafficked from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday through Thursday, and sinks especially hard after 8 p.m. So Kaling is free to get really insider-ish here, joking with one of her writers and Seth Meyers's brother (and Ike Barinholtz's onetime comedy partner--really insider-ish!). "It's a really good medium for teasing people," she says, "and comedy writers love to tease people."

TV's Social Disparity

Fox is the dominant network on social media, but its new star, Mindy Kaling, still must strike out on her own.

American Idol's 2012 season finale drew 20.7 million people, its worst ratings ever. But it caused 696,000 to comment in social media, making it not only the hottest social finale of last season but the highest-commented TV episode of all time. (In second place, Pretty Little Liars drew 469,000 commenters.) And yet even during Fox shows--the network that receives the most social media commentary--the actual stars are rarely tweeted about.

TOTAL FACEBOOK AND TWITTER COMMENTS ABOUT SHOWS ON THE TOP 5 TV NETWORKS LAST SEASON

New Girl
Total comments: 506,591
% about Zooey Deschanel: 12

The X Factor
Total comments: 3,824,583
% about Simon Cowell: 7

Bones
Total comments: 181,892
% about Emily Deschanel: 3

Family Guy
Total comments: 338,468
% about Seth MacFarlane: 1

American Idol
Total comments: 6,124,117
% about Ryan Seacrest: 1

Source : fastcompany[dot]com