2006 Software 500: Deep Concerns Over Security

The 2006 Software 500 reflects deep concern over information security as 40 % more companies than last year identified information security as their primary business sector, and those companies increased employees 40 % over the previous year.

Overall, total 2006 Software 500 revenue of $380.8 billion worldwide for 2005 represents just under a 1 % decline from the previous year, when total revenue was $383.3 billion. Total employees in the 2006 Software 500 declined just under 5 %, from 2,663,023 at the end of 2004 to 2,539,872 at the end of 2005.

Outside of the security sector, employee growth was strong in human resource management systems (39 % increase), healthcare (23 % increase), content management (22 % increase) and customer relationship management (17 % increase).

The top of the Software 500 saw few changes as IBM again took Number 1 with a 3 % increase in software and services revenue to $63.1 billion, and Microsoft placed in the second with 7.6 % growth to $36.5 billion in software and services revenue. EDS, Hewlett-Packard Co., Accenture and Computer Sciences Corp. were next at ranks three through six, reflecting the clustering at the top of the Software 500 of the largest system integration and services firms.

Among the fastest growing companies with more than $2 billion in revenue this year, Wipro Limited, at No. 28, stands out with its 117 % growth rate on its strength in system integration services from its India base. The company competes in multiple markets including CRM, business intelligence, software engineering and complex global application projects, such as those implementing SAP applications. Another standout is Infosys Technologies Limited, at No. 38, with a 50 % growth rate from the previous survey year. Also based in India, Infosys is also strong in system integration services and positions with its “Win in the Flat World” and Global Delivery Model taglines.

Most of 2006 Software 500 companies grew up to 24 %, 231 of them, while only 17 % or 84 companies reported declining revenue, eight fewer than last year.

Serena, at No. 126, shows notable growth among companies with between $100 million and $1 billion in revenue, registering 142 % growth. The privately held concern with mainframe roots is benefiting from its strategy to offers its change control capabilities across a range of platforms while keeping a strong technical focus on “Change Governance,” in its marketing parlance. Also growing at 142 % in this category by virtue of the merger of Concerto Software (last year at No. 144) and Aspect Communications, is Aspect Software, now at No. 82. The company is focusing its product portfolio strongly on the contact center. Privately held Infor moved up from No. 111 to No. 102 this year, on the basis of 126 % growth in revenue to $350 million, building on its core ERP applications to “Enrich, Extend and Evolve.”

Growing rapidly in companies in the $30 million to $100 million revenue range was Recruitmax Software, up 216 % in revenue on the strength of its products for recruitment, compensation and performance management — the employee lifecycle. (Note: Recruitmax changed its name to Vurv Technology Inc. in the spring of 2006.) Also growing dramatically in this revenue range was Click Commerce, up 128 % thanks to its on-demand supply chain focus. (Note: The company announced in September an agreement to be acquired for a value of $292 million by Illinois Tool Works, Inc., a diversified manufacturer of engineered components with 700 business units.) Also, Omniture, with its business optimization product line, had a strong showing of 108 % growth; and Aztecsoft Ltd., showed 99 % growth, relying on its software and quality engineering services.

Seeing strong growth among companies in the $10 million to $30 million range were: ActivCard Corp. growing 144 %, with its digital identity assurance products; NetQoS, Inc., supplier of network performance management products and services, growing 110 %; and Acronis, supplier of shrink-wrapped products focusing on storage management, growing 107 %.

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Free Software ... What is it mean ??

Now, we're talking about Free software, actually, what is mean ??

Free software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things. To make these acts possible, the human readable form of the program (called the source code) must be made available and the software must be accompanied by a software licence saying that the copyright holder permits these acts (a free software licence). Software can also be free software by putting the source code in the public domain.^[1]

Alternative terms for free software have been coined in an attempt to make the use of "free" less ambiguous. The most common is "open-source software", which has since evolved to refer to a subtly different sense of freedom. Free software is also known as "software libre", "free, libre and open-source software" ("FLOSS"), and "free/open-source software" ("FOSS").

Free software and "freeware" should not be confused. Freeware is software made available free of charge. Everyone is free to sell copies of free software, to use it commercially, and to charge for distribution and modifications. Because anyone who has a copy may distribute the software at no cost, the software generally is available at no cost. Free software business models are usually based on adding value such as support, training, customisation, integration, or certification. At the same time, some business models which work with non-free software are not compatible with free software, such as those that depend on a user having no choice but to pay for a license in order to lawfully use a software product.

The free software movement was launched in 1983 to make these freedoms available to every computer user.^[2] Software that does not provide these freedoms is referred to as proprietary software or non-free software.

Now i know what is it mean ...

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New Deployment Agent By McCabe Software

This news come from McCabe Software.

McCabe Software has taken another step toward end-to-end software configuration management with the release of TRUEchange 3.4.

McCabe’s chief differentiator from its competitors has always been its treatment of each development task as an individual, free-standing object or change-set rather than as a delta or change from another piece of software. The benefit of McCabe’s straightforward approach is that it simplifies the task of managing, tracking and implementing changes across an enterprise or across a software product family, according to Barbara Dumas, McCabe’s director of Software Configuration Management (SCM) solutions.

Now McCabe has made a major improvement to TRUEchange 3.4 with the addition of its TRUEchange Agent. The Agent automates the scheduling of deployment, installation and tracking of software changes or fixes, which can be initiated remotely, scheduled in advance and split up among multiple boxes, Dumas explains. The Agent directs everything from within the configuration itself and facilitates repeatable and automated release management. It also provides tracking required by federal audits.

Dumas adds that while automated deployments of software upgrades and patches are commonplace across large desktop installations, this process has been manual in the smaller universe of software development until now with the advent of the Agent. No other software configuration management package has a tool comparable to the Agent, which, incidentally, can be used with other SCM products, she notes.

The Agent is not just a scheduling tool but a self-contained manager with the ability to direct and track changes across platforms and operating systems and apply changes selectively, backward and forward, to different versions, says Dumas. “We’re talking end-to-end, from a change request to developing and building a change, managing output and, finally, deployment and execution. This is really new and different.”

Additionally, the Agent has a small enough footprint to push changes out to devices with embedded systems via TCP/IP.

McCabe’s competitive differentiator is its Agent and its system of tracking individual software changes themselves rather than as dependent deltas, sharing changes rather than copying and revising them, Dumas says.

Chief competitors to TRUEchange 3.4 are IBM’s Rational ClearCase, AccuRev, Serena ChangeMan, CVS, and Subversion.

Customers include JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Network Solutions, and ADP.

Pricing for TRUEchange 3.4, which includes the Agent, starts at $20,000. Purchased separately, the Agent is priced at $20,000 in blocks of 10 deployment destination points.

For more information, go to: www.mccabe.com

Great ...

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I have a good information for you : Hacking Software On Sale On eBay

This is about software that aid in hack.

Software that aid in hacking are reported to be on sale on American auction site eBay.
According to reports by security experts, someone is selling a collection of CDs, DVDs and programmes on eBay that aid buyers to learn how to break into computers over the net. One of the CDs on sale priced at Ј5.99, says it provides details of how to access other people's computers and contains a selection of programs commonly used for hacking. Many of the programs form the basic building blocks for computer crime, allowing even inexperienced hackers to find ways to get inside their victims' computers, or of masking their identities.
In a statement, eBay said it was working to prevent illegal sales from taking place.
"We have very strict and detailed rules permitting only lawful and legitimate sales on the site, and a huge amount is done to ensure that these are upheld."

I found this articles from www.sda-asia.com

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Features : Outsourcing the User Experience

Why we takes outsourcing user experience ?Below is the answer. User experience outsourcing can achieve high-impact results for your software application and your bottom line. But it’s important to understand and avoid the inherent pitfalls in the outsourcing process.

Outsourcing has gotten a bad name for itself recently, in some measure because of the growing popularity of outsourcing to overseas markets in an attempt to reduce costs. But outsourcing the User eXperience (UX) of a software application, website, or Web service is a horse of a different color. Although cost-saving can be a goal, UX work (including user research, analysis, and user-centered design) is much more frequently undertaken as a form of transformational outsourcing—it is used to improve the quality of the application and undertaken to have impact on the bottom line. The drivers for engaging a UX firm effort may come from business initiatives (new functionality, an upcoming new release), brand and marketing (the need to upgrade an image or an outdated look), or simply feedback from clients, customers and users of an application: customers may be complaining that the application takes too long to complete; it may be hard to find critical information or functionality on a Web-based service; there may be too many calls to Technical Support for your product. A redesigned user experience can be a critical tool to help companies: Improve the quality of an application or suite of applications Attract or retain customers or users Increase sales Improve usability or “findability” of key features or content. (See Fig. 1.) Common Pitfalls When you decide to engage a UX vendor, you can’t help hoping for that perfect “honeymoon” scenario: you hire the outside vendor, they hand you results in a couple of months, you plug in the deliverables, and you sit back and wait for your bottom-line results to mushroom upwards. But in reality, outsourcing the user experience is more like an internal project than a “black box” purchase of outside labor. It requires focus and participation from you as client to be most successful. You also need to avoid the more common problems and pitfalls that can derail a UX project. 1: Resistance from Existing Team Members Introducing a new vendor to your existing design, development, or user experience team is bound to ruffle a few feathers. In some cases, there may be a single team member who thinks he or she is being replaced and, as a result, may get a little distressed, angry, or difficult to work with during the process. Alternatively, your existing (external) development or design group may feel competitive with the UX vendor and will endeavor (consciously or unconsciously) to sabotage your UX project. An example of this is when one or more developers responsible for implementing a new front end wait until the deliverables come in before informing senior management that the design is “simply not doable” in the timeframe. The Solution Tactics that can successfully minimize resistance from team members include: Getting people involved. Team members involved in implementation may be invited to requirements-setting sessions, for example, so their voices can be heard. Establishing clearly defined roles for the key players involved in implementation. Be sure that roles do not overlap too much, particularly with the vendor’s role. Defining a clear feedback process. Feedback from you and your team members to the vendor should be funneled through a single point-person (e.g., the project manager for the project). This gives team members a voice, while ensuring consistent and consolidated communication. 2: Inadequate or Unrealistic Requirements Put simply, you will not get results from an outside UX effort unless there is a good set of requirements established as the first step in the effort. Without a requirements document of some kind, there is room for miscommunication, misinterpretation, and even finger-pointing at later stages of the project. Requirements are often made that are vague, poorly worded, or inadequate in scope. This is usually the result of not taking adequate time to complete the “needs analysis process.” Conversely, you can have too many requirements, if you leave the vendor to collect requirements from stakeholders separately. The Solution Ideally, the setting of requirements is a joint effort at the start of a UX engagement, between the internal manager/stakeholders and the UX vendor. I call this work stage the needs analysis step. Make sure your UX vendor includes an adequate amount of resources and time to complete this stage. During needs analysis, the UX team will collect information from you on subjects including your short- and long-term business goals, your technical constraints, your users or customers, and the scenarios for use. By the end of this stage, you should have a mutually agreed upon, crisp definition of the requirements for the user experience, including things that must be in the design and what the users must be able to accomplish. Metrics for success can be included as part of the requirements, but they should be appropriate for the timeframe and budget (i.e., don’t expect to triple sales on a small five-figure budget or within a one-month timeframe). Be realistic. 3: Surprises in the Deliverables You’re not alone if you don’t like to be surprised in your deliverables from vendors. You’ve signed up for “X” and you expect “X” to be delivered. But UX projects can go awry when clients and vendors don’t communicate about the nature of the end product. This can include poor definitions from the vendor about the total number of deliverables, the schedule for deliverables, or the form each deliverable will take. Some clients expect the vendor to keep redesigning a front end “until it’s right,” for example, but the vendor may be expecting to do a maximum of two rounds of design reviews, plus a polish. The Solution Make sure the proposal or contract details (and explains, if necessary) the nature of the UX deliverables, including the expected format(s), and the number of rounds of revisions for each key deliverable. This is particularly important for flat-fee projects. Provisions for additional requests and timeframe extensions should be made as well. Strategies for Successful UX Outsourcing It’s not just about the vendor. As the client, you need to take a few steps to ensure success in any user experience project: 1) Establish your shared (stakeholder) goals. It’s up to you to get the stakeholders in the same room and discuss your reasons for bringing in the vendor. Before you start the engagement, try to define your shared vision for success, and what you ideally want out of the process. It helps enormously to have the stakeholders on the same page. 2) Outsource for discrete deliverables. If you know what you want upfront, you are more likely to get it from your vendor. Examples of some common user experience deliverables include: User research (including usability testing of an existing application, or interviews with your client base) User-centered requirements (user scenarios, task analysis, requirements documents) Look & feel deliverables (key pages or all pages of the application in Photoshop files or production-level graphics) User interface specifications or wireframes Entire front-end design 3) Involve team members early and consistently. To avoid resentment and resistance to the outsourcing effort, engage your existing team members in the process, and establish clear roles between them and the outside firm for the duration of the project. This helps eliminate the “us versus them” mentality and the negative feelings that can sabotage an important redesign or UX project. Eliciting input from team members will also help the outside team create better user experience deliverable(s) for your company. And by involving team members early, you set the stage for ownership of the final design or hand-off of project deliverables, which will help you take your software application further, faster.

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Is It Legal ?

I'm asking to some friend. Are they using a license software on their office? Are they using a license component on their application? Most of them said "No". Sometimes, to get a license component they just crack for it, and then ... tadaaaaaa ... the object will gonna be a license component.

Sometimes i also using it in my software. In the beside that, i'll try to use a license component. If i need a good component, i just send my friend email (they have so much component) and i'm asking for him that i'll using their component.

And than, i'm just downloading it and using it. I think it's legal. Because we get permission from the owner. So that some of my software using legal component.

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In Defense of UML, RUP,and Application Design (Part-3)

Bottom-Up Project Planning

Let’s go back now to my recent project. Several days were spent creating a detailed plan that embodied our approach, describing the tasks involved along with some concept of the resources necessary. That plan was then passed on to the project manager. The technical team now felt comfortable about the scope of the project, and we felt more prepared for our second meeting with management. We now believed we had a defensible position that was substantiated by a realistic plan.

About halfway through the design phase, however, a project manager came on board and recommended that we use the Agile methodology. Forgive a digression, but it appears to me that the main reason Agile is compelling to management is its stark simplicity. Essentially, it uses only a handful of operative words: iteration, scrum, dynamic method adaptation, and a few others, and it is now being extolled as being analogous to the way software was written in the past. As an object-oriented technologist, I have no interest in returning to the languages of the past, such as Assembler or FORTRAN, so I don’t really identify with this statement.

Basically, we created scrums and iterations from the existing project plan. (Scrum is an agile, lightweight process that can be used to manage and control software and product development using iterative, incremental practices.) Since some of the designs were complete, we then initiated full lifecycle iterations: that is, design to code complete. The early iterations went fairly well, which seemed to corroborate the success and usefulness of the methodology. I was assured early on during the effort that for subsequent iterations we would complete the design first; however, that never happened. We ended up completing the design the old-fashioned way, by having ad hoc whiteboard discussions of the object interaction and workflow behavior.

I also found that the concept of moving back and forth between design and coding is somewhat awkward. Design time is when you get away from computers, to a degree, and conceptually create the proposed system. In fact, being encumbered by the immediate implementation (e.g. Java, C++, etc.) can destroy creative forward engineering. Additionally, not having an end-to-end complete design can result in inconsistent applications; the design “model” needs to be completed as a single body of work, not something that can be incrementally carved up into iterations. In reality, some organizations mistake activity, in particular coding, for progress; time spent actually designing is simply not appreciated.

Implications

Today’s technologists are more interested in learning implementation than in learning design. I further submit that with the advent of anti-methodologies, such as Agile, the design ineptness of software development organizations has been further exacerbated—not remedied. Although I truly believe that the best designers understand implementation as well as design, it is their ability to negotiate the feedback loop between design and implementation that results in the most effective approach to software development.

As my statistics professor cautioned at the university, a little bit of statistics is a dangerous thing. The same can be said about methodology.

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In Defense of UML, RUP,and Application Design (Part-2)

Not Heavy, But Solid

RUP has a reputation for being a “heavy” methodology that requires a solid understanding of UML, which is why so many organizations find ways to avoid it. However, not having a plan or a methodology is not just unprofessional—it’s plain foolish.

I have worked with quite a few methodologies, from Coopers & Lybrand’s Summit S and D to CSC’s Catalyst. They too were heavy, but when they were used appropriately, I always found they contributed significantly to project success.

The main problem with methodologies is that organizations don’t embrace them. They don’t work with them enough or give them enough time to hit their stride within the development group. As an organization gains expertise, it learns the tricks of the trade and when and where shortcuts can be taken.

In my opinion, reactionary organizations that do not take project management seriously never really know the complexity or size of a project until it is under way. These types of organizations tend to add resources in a just-in-time fashion, and those resources are perpetually in a “hover” position, since management doesn’t really know how long the project will take or how to size it.

Project Approach and Methodology

RUP is a powerful methodology and useful for most object-oriented business systems projects, but I believe you need to level it for the type of project and complexity you are facing. The venerable Summit, from Coopers & Lybrand, incorporated a useful concept called “route mapping,” in which, depending on certain project characteristics such as whether the application being implemented was targeted for a mainframe or a PC, certain artifacts or tasks could be optional.

The basic methodology stayed intact, although it could be tailored to the unique needs of the project. In effect, RUP can be used in the same way. Some functionality may need only a simple high-level UML sequence diagram and no view of participating classes (VOPC). Other projects with more complex workflows might need state-transition diagrams. However, it is my understanding that RUP has never adopted a “route mapping” concept, so Activity, Sequence, Class, State, Transition, and the like seem to be necessary for all functionality.

Agile is another example of a methodology that uses the concept of route mapping. One of the fundamental ideas of eXtreme Programming (XP) is that there is no process that fits every situation, so the relevant tasks for each type of project need to be tailored to its individual needs. Route maps can be used in order to determine which structured method fragments should be used for a particular project.

Object-oriented purists might say that not exercising all artifacts is a bastardization of the methodology and not what its authors intended. That is, that all use cases should be realized in the form of sequence diagrams; and that sequence diagrams should be used to drive out class behavior; and that all sequence diagrams should have a VOPC, etc. I don’t agree with that, either. Mindlessly following RUP as a cookbook is exactly what has given it a less than stellar reputation and contributed to its reputation as being heavy. I believe that, given the limited time project managers usually allot for design, choosing design artifacts that will have the most impact is the best approach. In any case, a certain amount of methodology—and not just a veneer of methodology—is better than none at all.

Design Artifacts

I have found that even a basic set of sequence diagrams with well-defined method signatures can go a long way toward clarifying design. Take an application that imports an Excel file, parses the data in the incoming spreadsheet, persists the data to a database management system, and then asynchronously notifies Java Message Service (JMS) that there is a batch to be processed. (See Fig. 1.) In a typical project, several resources would be needed to realize the implementation of the design; the model is the first step in the collaboration effort.

On large teams, the consumers of UML artifacts are, for the most part, other team members. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that UML is truly a universal language, as the name implies, and that all technologists have embraced it. Offshoring projects that rely on UML as the lingua franca assume that the human resources they’re communicating with have an understanding of UML. Not true. Today’s software development teams tend to be very eclectic, whereas resources can be language-challenged. On one recent project, I naively thought that if I created UML artifacts I would overcome the native language weakness with a common language construct (that is, the Unified Modeling Language). However, UML still requires an understanding of language, as well as rigorous conceptual skills that need to be learned over time. In the end, it took brute force to complete the project, since no one on the team really understood the artifacts. I would recommend interviewing project resources on their UML fundamentals or, better yet, have them create a design for you.

Recently I spoke with a project manager who observed that design was useful mainly for communication among project participants. While that is most definitely true, I take umbrage at the idea that design is useful only for that purpose. That type of attitude toward design relegates it to an activity that you perform in preparation for offshoring the implementation. At best, a good design artifact can allow for what NASA calls static design testing, where the design is robust enough to test prior to construction. At a minimum, a view of the system as a well-defined set of objects can provide scope and responsibility for application components to be implemented. In my opinion, UML is a good notation for getting ideas out of your head and down on paper in an organized manner. The process of committing your ideas to paper or a design tool is very much a part of the design process. For example, constructs that might appear simple at first may turn out to be complex, and vice versa.

Many projects go wrong because of the belief that a UML tool can emit a design through the XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) interface, and that the exported design can be used directly as working code. XMI is an Object Management Group (OMG) standard for exchanging metadata information via eXtensible Markup Language (XML). It can be used for any metadata whose meta-model can be expressed in Meta-Object Facility (MOF). The most common use of XMI is as an interchange format for UML models, though it can also be used for the serialization of models of other languages. Not that this isn’t achievable or that object prototypes can’t be emitted from a tool; many tools, such as IBM’s Rational XDE or realMethods, are capable of forward and reverse engineering. It is the typical developer’s lack of experience that is really the weak link: the promise or expectation of generating working code directly from a design artifact is usually more than they can deliver. A successful design phase should not be measured by the amount of code generated from the design tool.

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In Defense of UML, RUP,and Application Design (Part-1)

by Frank Teti “Heavy” or not, a good methodology can be the key to success for a project. But using it properly requires practice, understanding, and communication.

Most technologists who build enterprise-wide business systems would agree that one of the hardest, yet most important, parts of the job is the task of gaining an understanding of business requirements. Translating requirements into design artifacts useful for implementing systems is an art as well as a science, and implementing business systems is as much about communication as it is about technology. Using Unified Modeling Language (UML) in conjunction with Rational Unified Process (RUP) provides more than enough guidance. However, like any language or methodology, it requires commitment and practice. Methodology as Foundation The seasoned architect looks at a project from a holistic perspective and tends to minimize the technical challenges while maximizing the other issues: unrealistic deadlines, weak project management, poorly written requirements, and so on. After all, in most business-systems projects, the technical architecture is usually well-known and documented. However, the lack of a realistic project plan or methodology can really doom a project. Take, for example, a recent project in which I was involved as the architect. Since the project was making the transition from the requirements phase to design, I was initially involved with resolving requirements and assisting management in its effort to estimate project timelines and associated resource loading. At a meeting with company management, we discussed the complexity of the project and our expectations for when it might be completed. Yes, the project was complex, but the only artifact we could really point to was the functional design document. We really had no technical plan that would demonstrate complexity, so we were, essentially, in a defenseless position. After the meeting, I marshaled the senior technical people in an attempt to create a detailed plan using a bottom-up approach. Although they really didn’t feel that this was part of their job, good architects know that building a software system is not just about using design patterns and writing code. A useful, detailed plan and methodology organizes tasks as well as task responsibilities in a logical sequence. Moreover, a detailed plan can provide sizing information that will help answer the paramount concern of management: How long is it going to take? The project plan we developed was for an enterprise-grade J2EE project for which we would loosely follow the four phases of RUP: inception, elaboration, construction, and transition.

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Driving Requirements Down the Pipe

by Jim Johnson An agile development process improves the odds of success; try executing a baseline project to take six months and cost no more than $750,000

“A requirement saved is a requirement earned,” to paraphrase Ben Franklin. A saying that might be just as germane is, “If you watch your pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves,” but you’ll have to change it to, “If you watch your requirements, the projects will take care of themselves.” Let’s face it: a project is a collection of requirements, just like a dollar is a collection of pennies. There is one big difference, though—all pennies have the same value and risk. Requirements are not created equal, and they should not be considered as such. If clairvoyance were a true science, then you could rely on traditional methods to estimate the cost of a project or a group of projects. However, we all know that these estimates are both difficult and inaccurate. We get them wrong most of the time. (See Fig. 1.) Instead of doing poor and inaccurate estimates, why not change the whole way you look at the problem? The Project Portfolio Your proposed projects can be viewed as a list of investment choices. You will allocate resources to the ones that will add the best value to your portfolio. You may not know it, but you have a resource pool. It’s called your development staff. The cost of the pool is the budget for this staff. Your goal is to produce output that has high value and is delivered in a timely manner. The strategy that delivers the best result with the shortest delay is to quickly move output from the pool down a pipeline and into the hands of the stakeholders. (See Fig. 2.) How an Optimized Pipeline Works Suppose you have a pool of 20 developers, all using the Extreme Programming model. This would mean you have 10 developer pairs. Now, pretend you have five “stories” or projects, and each project has 30 index cards, adding up to 150 weeks of work. If you divide this work among your pool of developers, you will have 15 weeks of work. If you mark each index card with its risks and gains, you can then sort them by their value. Of course, government mandates and political items may rise to the top of the pool, but that’s life in the big city. Each week you assess progress, review your risk and gain assumptions, look at new requirements, and schedule the following week’s work prioritized by value. When the week’s work is completed, it is then moved to the testing area, checked by users and, if appropriate, put into production. The pipeline channels resources to the most essential current activities and puts functional, high-value tools into the hands of users. In recent years, project managers have been learning how to manage the process of their projects, so it’s not too far-fetched to believe they could learn how to manage a project pipeline. The financial management of the pipeline is smooth, constant, and consistent. Admittedly, changing from a project-based management structure to a requirements-driven and pipeline-based management structure might temporarily be a wrenching experience, especially for project managers. At Standish, we believe pipelining can be used by most organizations, and we are looking at a number of firms that have implemented all or parts of a pipelining solution. Many of the tenets described in the Standish book My Life is Failure are basic tools for a pipelining strategy. The pipelining strategy consists of three major parts: 1. Maintaining the Right Resource Pool First, all of your resources (internal personnel and outside consultants) must be put into a pool rather than assigned to specific projects or programs. Each person is then identified by his or her skills and capabilities. You will need a real-time database that is continually updated if you are to execute this strategy. As people gain experience, they will be able to perform a greater variety of tasks, thereby broadening not only their usefulness, but also the flexibility of your resource pool. That pool should be considered a high-value corporate asset and treated as such. 2. Strict Baselines and Gating Second, you need to define a lean baseline for any new project. The baseline consists of the minimum list of requirements needed to provide essential business value. In addition, you need a gating strategy. Any new project needs to go through a formal gating process (as outlined in My Life is Failure). A project cannot make it through a gate unless the minimum requirements that have been set for that gate have been completed. A key function of the gating process is that it weeds out many low-value or unfeasible projects before they are started, and discards in-progress projects that are hopelessly failing before a large amount of money has been spent. The procedure should be the same whether you outsource a project or temporarily use part of your resource pool. If you use the resource pool, then once the baseline is done, the people are put back into the resource pool. This project is then put into the application portfolio. Any new work for this project will have to compete with other applications in the portfolio. 3. Microproject Stacking Third, you need to adopt a “net value of work” strategy. This is the heart of pipelining execution. Tasks—or what we term “microprojects,” for the application portfolio—are broken down into finite timeframes, such as a week for the Extreme Programming model or a month for the Scrum model. You might decide to use two weeks, but the top limit should be no more than a month. Each piece of work or microproject will be ranked by gain and risk, with the highest expected value on the top of your work stack. Microprojects within the application portfolio will be assigned from the top of the microproject stack. Each microproject must be a stepping-stone, meaning that there must be solid criteria and tests for completion. You may consider a slightly different strategy as an alternative. For example, as each worker accomplishes his or her goal, that worker goes back into the resource pool or gets to choose from a limited number of items—say from the top 10 microprojects within the microproject pool—that can be accomplished by the person’s skill set. So, in summary, there are three major parts to pipelining: pooling resources, building foundation baselines, and stacking microprojects. This strategy is similar to using an iterative process, but one difference is that it impels the organization to iteratively maximize its ROI or gain. Now let’s look at these three major parts in greater detail. Resource Pooling As we stated in My Life is Failure, the human resources component of “Management 101” emphasizes that the staff is your most valuable asset. Not surprisingly, one of the key project success factors identified in Standish Group’s CHAOS research is a competent staff. There are six key practices for ensuring staff competency within a resource pooling environment. First, identify the required competencies and alternative skills. Second, provide a good, continuous training program to enhance staff skills. Third, recruit both internally and externally to provide a balance of experience. Fourth, provide incentives to motivate the staff. Fifth, ensure the staff is microproject-focused. Finally, sixth, provide a technology environment that reduces complexity by using a limited number of standard infrastructure components and tools. To ensure a competent staff, you must understand your microproject environment. You should know the range of activities that need to be undertaken and be able to match skills with those activities. Certainly you will need a variety of resources, such as database designers, screen designers, and testers. The challenge consists of properly identifying the required competencies, the required level of experience, and the expertise needed for each identifiable task. You also will need to calculate the number of resources with a given skill that are required, when they will be needed, when they will be released, and whether you have ample resources internally or must call on external personnel. This is a balancing act in itself. Resource pooling is kind of like the old typing pools, but different. You will have a database of people, and their skills must be described in sufficient detail for you to be able to match skills to requirements. You will also need visibility into the activities and availability of each member of your resource pool. When a resource becomes available, that person will work on the most highly rated available microproject that meets his or her skills. If the top microproject does not require the skills of the available resource, that resource goes top-down to the first microproject that meets his or her skills. Here is an interesting problem. You might have shortages of certain skills that cause bottlenecks. You may end up with a collection of high-priority microprojects on the top of the stack that stay there for too long a period. This phenomenon is known as “topping the stack.” The right response is to periodically check the highest-level microprojects and assess where you need to acquire people to add to your resource pool, or to train existing members in new skills. The more standard your infrastructure is, the more likely you will be able to develop a resource pool that covers a greater range of microprojects, thus relieving many of the stack-topping incidents. Another phenomenon you may see is known as “bottom churn.” This occurs when low-priority items go through the pipe at a higher velocity than the top and middle. Bottom churn happens when too many of your resources only have skills that address the lower-priority microprojects. As above, you can correct this issue by altering your resource pool. Bottom churn is bad, because it means you are losing much of your financial advantage. If anything, you want to stave off the bottom. The ultimate goal is to obtain value and to create velocity by moving the right microprojects off the stack as fast as possible. “Geeks are easy. Give them more toys, don’t yell at them, and they will be happy,” says Ken Beck, father of Extreme Programming. Everyone has preferences for what they like working on and what they do not like working on. The more enjoyable the task, the higher the chances the task will be done well and quickly. So you could set up a bidding system where workers could select from a small number of microprojects from the top of the stack that meet their skill level. If a microproject sits on top of the stack too long, a trigger would go off and it would then be assigned to the next available qualified resource, thus again preventing topping. The hope would be that everyone would get to work on things they like as much as possible. A “Recipe for Success” Projects with US normalized labor cost less than $750,000 have a 73 percent change of coming in on time and on budget. Your chances go down dramatically with each added dollar. Using an agile process will improve your odds. (See Fig. 3.) For a long time, IT executives have followed the waterfall method, in which the software lifecycle flows through phases: requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing, and maintenance. The waterfall method is attributed to W.W. Royce, but Royce actually stated that this method “is risky and invites failure.” In fact, he proposed an iterative process that relies on feedback from each phase to decide what should be done next. . Our basic “Recipe for Success,” written in 1999, calls for ingredients of minimization, communications and standard infrastructure. You then mix in good project management, iterative development process, project management tools and adherence to key roles. Bake no longer than six months at no more than six people and at no more than $750,000 in US labor costs. It isn’t really the cost that is the big issue, it’s the time. The Recipe for Success is just as relevant today. However, we now believe that it should only be applied to baseline projects, and should marry a gating system with an agile, iterative process. Strict adherence to the Recipe for Success calls for a baseline project to end after no more than six months. Once baseline requirements have been defined for the foundation, the project gets a free ride until the end of the six months. But when that period ends, the resources must be put back into the pool. This should happen no matter where the project is in the process. (This strict adherence to the six-month timeframe is also known as time boxing.) At the end of the six months, the project also should go into the portfolio. If the stakeholders say that the result is not usable, a decision must be made either to junk the project, or to specify the remaining work that has to be done, break the work into microprojects, and place them in appropriate positions on the microproject stack. You should not consider six months as an optimal goal. A shorter timeframe—say, three months—produces even greater improvements in the flow of usable function to users. The key is that a short timeframe causes great concentration on the requirements that are truly needed. On top of the Recipe for Success, as I have said, we layer a gateway system and an agile development process. The three most popular agile processes are RUP, Extreme, and Scrum. All of these are based around an iterative process. The iterative process is the real silver bullet for developing software. Each of the three processes has some unique advantages, but they all get the job done. The Rational Unified Process (RUP) software development methodology has already married the agile process to a gating system. RUP breaks down the development of software into four gates. Each gate consists of iterations of the software at that gate in development. A project stays in a gate until the stakeholders are satisfied, and then it either moves to the next gate or is canceled. Gate one, called inception, deals with business requirements. Gate two, called elaboration, focuses on design. Gate three is called construction, and it is where you build and test the product. Gate four is called transition and is the phase that deals with deployment and change management. In this gate you fine-tune the performance, make any final adjustments, educate the users, and install the product. Of course, the user could reject the product and send you back to gate one. There are basically four parts to Extreme Programming, but it does not include gates. The parts are planning, designing, coding, and testing. Unlike other methodologies, these are not phases; rather, they work in tandem with each other. Planning includes user stories, stand-up meetings, and small releases. The rules of the design segment stress that functionality should not be added until it is needed. In the coding part, developers work in pairs, the code is written to an agreed standard, and the user is always available for feedback. In testing, the tests are written before the code. Scrum is similar to Extreme Programming. Both of these processes work really well after foundation building is complete, when you get into microproject stacking. It takes some effort to layer a gating system on these methodologies, but it can be done. No matter what methodology you use, all the foundation building should be done within the six-month timeframe, using a labor force of no more than six full-time or equivalent persons at each gate. Microproject Stacking Remember that a microproject is a single or a limited number of requirements. Each of the requirements or sets of requirements is assigned a cost, risk, and gain. The microproject must be completed within the micro timebox limit—a week, two weeks, or a month’s work for a single resource or resource pair. On the surface, this might seem like the simplest part of pipelining—assign cost, risk and gain and put them in line or on top of the stack by priority. But assigning a priority may not always be so easy. Just getting the whole team to agree on the cost, risk, and gain for each microproject is a challenging task in itself. You also have to consider non-monetary priorities, such as customer satisfaction, or regulatory compliance and mandated timeframes. Second, once you go to a microproject concept, the number of projects that you must prioritize explodes. That makes stacking them more complicated. Third, the relationships and dependencies between microprojects get extremely complicated. For example, “If I do microproject A, I don’t need to do this other microproject B.” Another case might be, “If I do this microproject, I’ll need to do these other three microprojects first.”

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2006 Software 500: Deep Concerns Over Security

by John P Desmond Revenue and employee head count flat; growth areas show opportunity for package markets, system integration services and infrastructure support

The 2006 Software 500 reflects deep concern over information security as 40 % more companies than last year identified information security as their primary business sector, and those companies increased employees 40 % over the previous year. Overall, total 2006 Software 500 revenue of $380.8 billion worldwide for 2005 represents just under a 1 % decline from the previous year, when total revenue was $383.3 billion. Total employees in the 2006 Software 500 declined just under 5 %, from 2,663,023 at the end of 2004 to 2,539,872 at the end of 2005. Outside of the security sector, employee growth was strong in human resource management systems (39 % increase), healthcare (23 % increase), content management (22 % increase) and customer relationship management (17 % increase). The top of the Software 500 saw few changes as IBM again took No. 1 with a 3 % increase in software and services revenue to $63.1 billion, and Microsoft placed second with 7.6 % growth to $36.5 billion in software and services revenue. EDS, Hewlett-Packard Co., Accenture and Computer Sciences Corp. were next at ranks three through six, reflecting the clustering at the top of the Software 500 of the largest system integration and services firms. Among the fastest growing companies with more than $2 billion in revenue this year, Wipro Limited, at No. 28, stands out with its 117 % growth rate on its strength in system integration services from its India base. The company competes in multiple markets including CRM, business intelligence, software engineering and complex global application projects, such as those implementing SAP applications. Another standout is Infosys Technologies Limited, at No. 38, with a 50 % growth rate from the previous survey year. Also based in India, Infosys is also strong in system integration services and positions with its “Win in the Flat World” and Global Delivery Model taglines. Most 2006 Software 500 companies grew up to 24 %, 231 of them, while only 17 % or 84 companies reported declining revenue, eight fewer than last year. Serena, at No. 126, shows notable growth among companies with between $100 million and $1 billion in revenue, registering 142 % growth. The privately held concern with mainframe roots is benefiting from its strategy to offers its change control capabilities across a range of platforms while keeping a strong technical focus on “Change Governance,” in its marketing parlance. Also growing at 142 % in this category by virtue of the merger of Concerto Software (last year at No. 144) and Aspect Communications, is Aspect Software, now at No. 82. The company is focusing its product portfolio strongly on the contact center. Privately held Infor moved up from No. 111 to No. 102 this year, on the basis of 126 % growth in revenue to $350 million, building on its core ERP applications to “Enrich, Extend and Evolve.” Growing rapidly in companies in the $30 million to $100 million revenue range was Recruitmax Software, up 216 % in revenue on the strength of its products for recruitment, compensation and performance management — the employee lifecycle. (Note: Recruitmax changed its name to Vurv Technology Inc. in the spring of 2006.) Also growing dramatically in this revenue range was Click Commerce, up 128 % thanks to its on-demand supply chain focus. (Note: The company announced in September an agreement to be acquired for a value of $292 million by Illinois Tool Works, Inc., a diversified manufacturer of engineered components with 700 business units.) Also, Omniture, with its business optimization product line, had a strong showing of 108 % growth; and Aztecsoft Ltd., showed 99 % growth, relying on its software and quality engineering services. Seeing strong growth among companies in the $10 million to $30 million range were: ActivCard Corp. (which changed its name to ActivIdentity in February 2006), growing 144 %, with its digital identity assurance products; NetQoS, Inc., supplier of network performance management products and services, growing 110 %; and Acronis, supplier of shrink-wrapped products focusing on storage management, growing 107 %. The following is a look at selected primary software business categories: Security Of the 29 companies who report security as their primary software business sector focus, Symantec is far and away the revenue leader with $2.58 billion in 2005 software/services sales, 38 % growth from a year earlier. Symantec is beginning to assimilate the acquisition of Veritas, extending its product line into storage management. With that now in place, the company is poised for continued growth with its offerings of products and services in anti-virus, email scanning, application performance management and personal firewalls. McAfee had a positive year with revenue growing 8.4 % and its products targeting marketing including the home, small/medium business and the enterprise. Via acquisitions, the company is also moving into intrusion detection, vulnerability management and wireless security. While ActivCard led the security segment in rate of growth, PatchLink Corp. was second with revenue increasing 88 %; the company’s effort to position within patch management and security is working. Growing at a 56 % rate was SafeNet Inc., with its products offering protection for identities, communities and applications. Control Break International (SafeBoot), with its focus on securing network-connected devices of all kinds, grew 49 %. The company’s two-factor, pre-boot access control and FIPS-certified encryption technologies help it win respect among IT buyers. Websense grew at a 33 % rate, continuing its focus on Internet management products, including Web filtering and control of workplace Internet surfing. Proginet, with a secure data integration focus, grew 25 %; and Internet Security Systems, the established player targeting the enterprise, saw 14 % growth to $329.8 million; Check Point Software Technologies grew at a 12 % clip to$579.4 million, seeing continued success with its offerings for perimeter, internal and Web protection. Application Development Serena was the growth leader in application development among companies with more than $100 million in revenue. The following companies also showed remarkable growth: Telelogic, extending its product range to enterprise lifecycle management, showed 21 % growth to reach $171.5 million; Micro Focus, focused on legacy development and deployment, grew 20 % to reach $150.6 million; and ILOG, with business rules, optimization and visualization components, grew 22 % to reach $125.3 million. In the niche market for workplace/facilities management software, TRIRIGA and Manhattan Software are both showing growth: TRIRIGA at 19 % to reach $27.5 million in revenue, and Manhattan at 21 % to reach $22.7 million in revenue. Both TRIRIGA and Manhattan Software have won recognition from Gartner Group as a leaders in Integrated Workplace Management Systems. Gartner rated 11 software suppliers on “Completeness of Vision” and ”Ability to Execute” in the market, which combines disciplines around managing facilities, real estate, maintenance and projects. Also notable in the application development category were: DefenseWeb Technologies, growing 116 % to reach $8.8 million, on the strength of its secure online information system development specifically to assist the U.S. Department of Defense service branches and health and family applications; Pathfinder Associates, growing 29 % to reach $4.5 million in revenue, leveraging its strengths in user experience design and application development; and DatamanUSA, growing 136 % to $2.4 million, with a focus on IT staff augmentation and software design and development. Financial Applications The financial applications category was cited as the primary business sector of more than 30 firms, an indication of the continued vitality of the market for collections of software functionality in packages. In companies with more than $1 billion in revenue, Intuit gained 13.4 % to reach nearly $2 billion in revenue. Taxpayers, consumers and small businesses are the firm’s core markets. Growing 13 % to reach $4 billion, SunGard Data Systems targets financial services, higher education and the public sector. The company counts among its customers 50 of the largest financial institutions and 1,600 colleges and universities. Also impressed with growth of 11 % to reach $1.4 billion is The Sage Group, which counts among its properties Peachtree Software and other brands throughout the world supporting accounting, payroll, CRM and certain vertical industries. Between $100 million and $1 billion in revenue, CheckFree Corp. grew 20 % to reach $728 million. The firm’s electronic commerce products for paying household bills online account for approximately 75 % of revenue; its investment services arm serving financial institutions accounts for 14 %, and its software applications unit, 11 %. Jack Henry & Associates, technology provider for the financial services industry, grew 19 % to reach $446.5 million. Blackbaud Inc., supplier of software and services for nonprofit organizations, with 15,000 entities as customers, grew 20 % to $161.1 million in 2005 software and services revenue. Fair Isaac Corp., the decision management player founded in 1956, whose software underlies the credit rating system (FICO® scores), grew 13 % to $798.7 million. In the $10 million to $100 million revenue range, Bottomline Technologies, offering products supporting the payment process, grew 23 % to reach $81 million. Kingland Systems, which operates data centers and offers applications developed in Java for its customers in financial services, grew 39 % to $11.4 million. CODA plc, offering packages to support accounting, procurement, reporting, analysis, compliance and governance, grew 13 % to $86.2 million. Alogent Corp., which aims to deliver technology efficiency for paper payments processing, grew 4 % to $15.5 million. In companies with less than $10 million in revenue Stockgroup Information Systems, which aims to help investors create and manage wealth, grew 27 % to $6.1 million; and Envision Financial Systems, supplier of packages to the institutional and mutual fund asset management markets, grew 19 % to $5.9 million. System Integration Services Moving the IT intelligence outside the organization is the competence of the successful system integration services outfits. It’s a huge growth area as companies try to figure out where in the world to grab resources. The services firms benefit as IT organizations fight to retain their own core competence and differentiation, while at the same time searching for the lowest cost alternative anywhere in the world for delivering needed application components. The next most dramatic growth among billion-dollar-plus revenue companies in this category after Wipro at 117 % and Infosys at 50 %, is Hewlett-Packard Co., which grew 26 % to reach $17.4 billion. HP’s software portfolio includes operating systems, print management tools and OpenView, now extending beyond network infrastructure to product lifecycle management. HP’s IT service organization is among the largest in the world, partly by virtue of the acquisition of Compaq, which had acquired the Digital Equipment Corp. service arm. Anteon, now part of General Dynamics, also showed respectable growth at 18 % to reach $1.5 billion in revenue. The firm targets defense, intelligence, homeland security, and federal, civil and commercial sectors. Among leaders in companies between $100 million and $1 billion in revenue, Cognizant Technology Solutions, which Gartner named a leader in offshore applications services, rose 51 % to reach $885.8 million. SRA International, targeting national security, civil government and healthcare, grew 43 % to reach $881.8 million. Satyam Computer Services Ltd., named a North American ERP challenger by Gartner, grew 40 % to reach $793.6 million. Patni Computer Systems, optimizing customer IT investments from offshore, grew 38 % to $450 million; and Ness Technologies, focusing on government and defense, financial services and telecommunications, grew 27 % to $370.7 million. Among companies grossing up to $100 million in revenue, Edgewater Technology, targeting the middle market with premium IT services, grew 61 % to reach $39.8 million; Collaborative Consulting, adding value to the technical abilities and business processes of clients, grew 32 % to reach $33.4 million; and Prelude Systems Inc., offering offshore services from a base in Southern California, grew 69 % to $5.3 million. Customer Relationship Management In this category, know the customer and keep the customer is the game. Being able to identify the customer no matter how the interaction occurs—in person, on the Web, phone, fax or e-mail—is a desired feature. More than 30 companies selected CRM as their primary business sector; the group has few at the top and more in the middle and lower ends of the Software 500 revenue ranges. In the more than$1 billion range: CRM revenue leader Acxiom Corp., focused on customer data integration, grew 21 % to reach $1.2 billion in revenue; Harte-Hanks, the direct marketing and publishing company, grew 10 % to reach $1.1 billion. In the $10 million to $100 million revenue range, achieving fastest growth was Knova Software. The newly-named company is the combination of ServiceWare Technologies, with its knowledge management systems for service and support, and Kanisa, with its service resolution management applications, grew 89 %% to reach $23.6 million. Next fastest growth in the category was RightNow Technologies, offering on-demand products for service, sales and marketing, growing 41 % to $87.1 million in software/services revenue. Exstream Software, offering products to streamline document creation processes, grew 37 % to reach $59.7 million; Alorica, customer service management product supplier, grew 34 % to $78.2 million; and Astea International, supplier of service management software, grew 18 % to reach $22.8 million. Among CRM companies earning up to $10 million in revenue, ServiceBench, offering Web-based service management products, grew 42 % to $8 million. Content Management Support for the process and infrastructure around managing content—be it website content, catalog content or the documentation critical to regulated industries—is an expanding space. Since this data was collected, the category has lost a market leader, Filenet, to acquisition by IBM. In companies with more than $100 million in revenue, the fastest growth was achieved by Open Text, an enterprise content management market leader, with 42 % growth to $414.8 million. Next Stellent, emphasizing fast implementation of content management, saw that message resonate with 41 % growth to reach $106.8 million. First in revenue between $10 million and $100 million, Autonomy, finding meaning in unstructured information, grew 48 % to reach $96 million. eCopy, focused on capturing digital data from paper documents, grew 46 % to reach $43.9 million. Document Sciences Corp., supporting personalized enterprise communication, has grown 28 % to $29.6 million. KnowledgeStorm, a search resource for IT buyers trying to reach technology suppliers, has grown 26 % to reach $13 million in revenue. In firms below $10 million in revenue, Nstein Technologies—offering content management, market intelligence and information access and search—grew 95 % to reach $7.8 million in revenue. Supply Chain/Manufacturing This segment is host to maturing ERP and other manufacturing software suppliers and newer firms with Internet-related roots that continue to grow at healthy rates. Of firms with more than $100 million in revenue, the fastest growing was Ariba, focused on “spend management” as in procurement, with a 31 % increase to $323 million in revenue. Next, Manhattan Associates, building on roots in warehouse management to a suite supporting the supply chain, grew 17 % to $223.2 million. Among companies with revenue between $10 million and $100 million, fastest growing was Click Commerce, on-demand supply chain management supporting real-time collaboration among business partners, up 128 % to reach $58.7 million. Logility, offering collaborative solutions for supply chain partners, grew 63 % to $37.3 million. Kewill Systems, with a supply chain execution focus on ordering, shipping and international trade and logistics, grew 24 % to $50.1 million. Provia Software (acquired by SSA Global in March 2006), supply chain management supplier, grew 21 % to $20.6 million. IT Infrastructure The software that holds together the production operation, the back room data center, the Internet nerve center—network management, operations support, “geek stuff”—has always been a strong category of software because it is needed no matter what advances are made in computing technology. Leading the growth in this category is Juniper Networks, positioned to enable secure, assured communications over a single IP network, grew 54 % to reach $2.1 billion in revenue. Between $100 million and $1 billion in revenue, fastest growing was Secure Computing Corp., concentrating on providing customers with a trusted Internet environment, with an increase of 17 % to reach $109.2 million. Between $10 million and $100 million in revenue, fastest growing was NetQoS, Inc., focused on improving application delivery over wide-area networks, growing 110 % to reach $22.3 million. Next, NUVO Network Management, offering managed services to boost IT performance, saw 39 % growth to reach $13.9 million in revenue. F5 Networks, concentrating on application security, optimization and availability, grew 37 % to $61.8 million. NetPro Computing, focused on the health and control of Windows-based networks, saw 27 % growth to $18.6 million in revenue. And InfoVista SA, positioned for service-centric performance management, saw 19 % growth to $41.4 million.

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2006 Software 500: Deep Concerns Over Security

by John P Desmond Revenue and employee head count flat; growth areas show opportunity for package markets, system integration services and infrastructure support

The 2006 Software 500 reflects deep concern over information security as 40 % more companies than last year identified information security as their primary business sector, and those companies increased employees 40 % over the previous year. Overall, total 2006 Software 500 revenue of $380.8 billion worldwide for 2005 represents just under a 1 % decline from the previous year, when total revenue was $383.3 billion. Total employees in the 2006 Software 500 declined just under 5 %, from 2,663,023 at the end of 2004 to 2,539,872 at the end of 2005. Outside of the security sector, employee growth was strong in human resource management systems (39 % increase), healthcare (23 % increase), content management (22 % increase) and customer relationship management (17 % increase). The top of the Software 500 saw few changes as IBM again took No. 1 with a 3 % increase in software and services revenue to $63.1 billion, and Microsoft placed second with 7.6 % growth to $36.5 billion in software and services revenue. EDS, Hewlett-Packard Co., Accenture and Computer Sciences Corp. were next at ranks three through six, reflecting the clustering at the top of the Software 500 of the largest system integration and services firms. Among the fastest growing companies with more than $2 billion in revenue this year, Wipro Limited, at No. 28, stands out with its 117 % growth rate on its strength in system integration services from its India base. The company competes in multiple markets including CRM, business intelligence, software engineering and complex global application projects, such as those implementing SAP applications. Another standout is Infosys Technologies Limited, at No. 38, with a 50 % growth rate from the previous survey year. Also based in India, Infosys is also strong in system integration services and positions with its “Win in the Flat World” and Global Delivery Model taglines. Most 2006 Software 500 companies grew up to 24 %, 231 of them, while only 17 % or 84 companies reported declining revenue, eight fewer than last year. Serena, at No. 126, shows notable growth among companies with between $100 million and $1 billion in revenue, registering 142 % growth. The privately held concern with mainframe roots is benefiting from its strategy to offers its change control capabilities across a range of platforms while keeping a strong technical focus on “Change Governance,” in its marketing parlance. Also growing at 142 % in this category by virtue of the merger of Concerto Software (last year at No. 144) and Aspect Communications, is Aspect Software, now at No. 82. The company is focusing its product portfolio strongly on the contact center. Privately held Infor moved up from No. 111 to No. 102 this year, on the basis of 126 % growth in revenue to $350 million, building on its core ERP applications to “Enrich, Extend and Evolve.” Growing rapidly in companies in the $30 million to $100 million revenue range was Recruitmax Software, up 216 % in revenue on the strength of its products for recruitment, compensation and performance management — the employee lifecycle. (Note: Recruitmax changed its name to Vurv Technology Inc. in the spring of 2006.) Also growing dramatically in this revenue range was Click Commerce, up 128 % thanks to its on-demand supply chain focus. (Note: The company announced in September an agreement to be acquired for a value of $292 million by Illinois Tool Works, Inc., a diversified manufacturer of engineered components with 700 business units.) Also, Omniture, with its business optimization product line, had a strong showing of 108 % growth; and Aztecsoft Ltd., showed 99 % growth, relying on its software and quality engineering services. Seeing strong growth among companies in the $10 million to $30 million range were: ActivCard Corp. (which changed its name to ActivIdentity in February 2006), growing 144 %, with its digital identity assurance products; NetQoS, Inc., supplier of network performance management products and services, growing 110 %; and Acronis, supplier of shrink-wrapped products focusing on storage management, growing 107 %. The following is a look at selected primary software business categories: Security Of the 29 companies who report security as their primary software business sector focus, Symantec is far and away the revenue leader with $2.58 billion in 2005 software/services sales, 38 % growth from a year earlier. Symantec is beginning to assimilate the acquisition of Veritas, extending its product line into storage management. With that now in place, the company is poised for continued growth with its offerings of products and services in anti-virus, email scanning, application performance management and personal firewalls. McAfee had a positive year with revenue growing 8.4 % and its products targeting marketing including the home, small/medium business and the enterprise. Via acquisitions, the company is also moving into intrusion detection, vulnerability management and wireless security. While ActivCard led the security segment in rate of growth, PatchLink Corp. was second with revenue increasing 88 %; the company’s effort to position within patch management and security is working. Growing at a 56 % rate was SafeNet Inc., with its products offering protection for identities, communities and applications. Control Break International (SafeBoot), with its focus on securing network-connected devices of all kinds, grew 49 %. The company’s two-factor, pre-boot access control and FIPS-certified encryption technologies help it win respect among IT buyers. Websense grew at a 33 % rate, continuing its focus on Internet management products, including Web filtering and control of workplace Internet surfing. Proginet, with a secure data integration focus, grew 25 %; and Internet Security Systems, the established player targeting the enterprise, saw 14 % growth to $329.8 million; Check Point Software Technologies grew at a 12 % clip to$579.4 million, seeing continued success with its offerings for perimeter, internal and Web protection. Application Development Serena was the growth leader in application development among companies with more than $100 million in revenue. The following companies also showed remarkable growth: Telelogic, extending its product range to enterprise lifecycle management, showed 21 % growth to reach $171.5 million; Micro Focus, focused on legacy development and deployment, grew 20 % to reach $150.6 million; and ILOG, with business rules, optimization and visualization components, grew 22 % to reach $125.3 million. In the niche market for workplace/facilities management software, TRIRIGA and Manhattan Software are both showing growth: TRIRIGA at 19 % to reach $27.5 million in revenue, and Manhattan at 21 % to reach $22.7 million in revenue. Both TRIRIGA and Manhattan Software have won recognition from Gartner Group as a leaders in Integrated Workplace Management Systems. Gartner rated 11 software suppliers on “Completeness of Vision” and ”Ability to Execute” in the market, which combines disciplines around managing facilities, real estate, maintenance and projects. Also notable in the application development category were: DefenseWeb Technologies, growing 116 % to reach $8.8 million, on the strength of its secure online information system development specifically to assist the U.S. Department of Defense service branches and health and family applications; Pathfinder Associates, growing 29 % to reach $4.5 million in revenue, leveraging its strengths in user experience design and application development; and DatamanUSA, growing 136 % to $2.4 million, with a focus on IT staff augmentation and software design and development. Financial Applications The financial applications category was cited as the primary business sector of more than 30 firms, an indication of the continued vitality of the market for collections of software functionality in packages. In companies with more than $1 billion in revenue, Intuit gained 13.4 % to reach nearly $2 billion in revenue. Taxpayers, consumers and small businesses are the firm’s core markets. Growing 13 % to reach $4 billion, SunGard Data Systems targets financial services, higher education and the public sector. The company counts among its customers 50 of the largest financial institutions and 1,600 colleges and universities. Also impressed with growth of 11 % to reach $1.4 billion is The Sage Group, which counts among its properties Peachtree Software and other brands throughout the world supporting accounting, payroll, CRM and certain vertical industries. Between $100 million and $1 billion in revenue, CheckFree Corp. grew 20 % to reach $728 million. The firm’s electronic commerce products for paying household bills online account for approximately 75 % of revenue; its investment services arm serving financial institutions accounts for 14 %, and its software applications unit, 11 %. Jack Henry & Associates, technology provider for the financial services industry, grew 19 % to reach $446.5 million. Blackbaud Inc., supplier of software and services for nonprofit organizations, with 15,000 entities as customers, grew 20 % to $161.1 million in 2005 software and services revenue. Fair Isaac Corp., the decision management player founded in 1956, whose software underlies the credit rating system (FICO® scores), grew 13 % to $798.7 million. In the $10 million to $100 million revenue range, Bottomline Technologies, offering products supporting the payment process, grew 23 % to reach $81 million. Kingland Systems, which operates data centers and offers applications developed in Java for its customers in financial services, grew 39 % to $11.4 million. CODA plc, offering packages to support accounting, procurement, reporting, analysis, compliance and governance, grew 13 % to $86.2 million. Alogent Corp., which aims to deliver technology efficiency for paper payments processing, grew 4 % to $15.5 million. In companies with less than $10 million in revenue Stockgroup Information Systems, which aims to help investors create and manage wealth, grew 27 % to $6.1 million; and Envision Financial Systems, supplier of packages to the institutional and mutual fund asset management markets, grew 19 % to $5.9 million. System Integration Services Moving the IT intelligence outside the organization is the competence of the successful system integration services outfits. It’s a huge growth area as companies try to figure out where in the world to grab resources. The services firms benefit as IT organizations fight to retain their own core competence and differentiation, while at the same time searching for the lowest cost alternative anywhere in the world for delivering needed application components. The next most dramatic growth among billion-dollar-plus revenue companies in this category after Wipro at 117 % and Infosys at 50 %, is Hewlett-Packard Co., which grew 26 % to reach $17.4 billion. HP’s software portfolio includes operating systems, print management tools and OpenView, now extending beyond network infrastructure to product lifecycle management. HP’s IT service organization is among the largest in the world, partly by virtue of the acquisition of Compaq, which had acquired the Digital Equipment Corp. service arm. Anteon, now part of General Dynamics, also showed respectable growth at 18 % to reach $1.5 billion in revenue. The firm targets defense, intelligence, homeland security, and federal, civil and commercial sectors. Among leaders in companies between $100 million and $1 billion in revenue, Cognizant Technology Solutions, which Gartner named a leader in offshore applications services, rose 51 % to reach $885.8 million. SRA International, targeting national security, civil government and healthcare, grew 43 % to reach $881.8 million. Satyam Computer Services Ltd., named a North American ERP challenger by Gartner, grew 40 % to reach $793.6 million. Patni Computer Systems, optimizing customer IT investments from offshore, grew 38 % to $450 million; and Ness Technologies, focusing on government and defense, financial services and telecommunications, grew 27 % to $370.7 million. Among companies grossing up to $100 million in revenue, Edgewater Technology, targeting the middle market with premium IT services, grew 61 % to reach $39.8 million; Collaborative Consulting, adding value to the technical abilities and business processes of clients, grew 32 % to reach $33.4 million; and Prelude Systems Inc., offering offshore services from a base in Southern California, grew 69 % to $5.3 million. Customer Relationship Management In this category, know the customer and keep the customer is the game. Being able to identify the customer no matter how the interaction occurs—in person, on the Web, phone, fax or e-mail—is a desired feature. More than 30 companies selected CRM as their primary business sector; the group has few at the top and more in the middle and lower ends of the Software 500 revenue ranges. In the more than$1 billion range: CRM revenue leader Acxiom Corp., focused on customer data integration, grew 21 % to reach $1.2 billion in revenue; Harte-Hanks, the direct marketing and publishing company, grew 10 % to reach $1.1 billion. In the $10 million to $100 million revenue range, achieving fastest growth was Knova Software. The newly-named company is the combination of ServiceWare Technologies, with its knowledge management systems for service and support, and Kanisa, with its service resolution management applications, grew 89 %% to reach $23.6 million. Next fastest growth in the category was RightNow Technologies, offering on-demand products for service, sales and marketing, growing 41 % to $87.1 million in software/services revenue. Exstream Software, offering products to streamline document creation processes, grew 37 % to reach $59.7 million; Alorica, customer service management product supplier, grew 34 % to $78.2 million; and Astea International, supplier of service management software, grew 18 % to reach $22.8 million. Among CRM companies earning up to $10 million in revenue, ServiceBench, offering Web-based service management products, grew 42 % to $8 million. Content Management Support for the process and infrastructure around managing content—be it website content, catalog content or the documentation critical to regulated industries—is an expanding space. Since this data was collected, the category has lost a market leader, Filenet, to acquisition by IBM. In companies with more than $100 million in revenue, the fastest growth was achieved by Open Text, an enterprise content management market leader, with 42 % growth to $414.8 million. Next Stellent, emphasizing fast implementation of content management, saw that message resonate with 41 % growth to reach $106.8 million. First in revenue between $10 million and $100 million, Autonomy, finding meaning in unstructured information, grew 48 % to reach $96 million. eCopy, focused on capturing digital data from paper documents, grew 46 % to reach $43.9 million. Document Sciences Corp., supporting personalized enterprise communication, has grown 28 % to $29.6 million. KnowledgeStorm, a search resource for IT buyers trying to reach technology suppliers, has grown 26 % to reach $13 million in revenue. In firms below $10 million in revenue, Nstein Technologies—offering content management, market intelligence and information access and search—grew 95 % to reach $7.8 million in revenue. Supply Chain/Manufacturing This segment is host to maturing ERP and other manufacturing software suppliers and newer firms with Internet-related roots that continue to grow at healthy rates. Of firms with more than $100 million in revenue, the fastest growing was Ariba, focused on “spend management” as in procurement, with a 31 % increase to $323 million in revenue. Next, Manhattan Associates, building on roots in warehouse management to a suite supporting the supply chain, grew 17 % to $223.2 million. Among companies with revenue between $10 million and $100 million, fastest growing was Click Commerce, on-demand supply chain management supporting real-time collaboration among business partners, up 128 % to reach $58.7 million. Logility, offering collaborative solutions for supply chain partners, grew 63 % to $37.3 million. Kewill Systems, with a supply chain execution focus on ordering, shipping and international trade and logistics, grew 24 % to $50.1 million. Provia Software (acquired by SSA Global in March 2006), supply chain management supplier, grew 21 % to $20.6 million. IT Infrastructure The software that holds together the production operation, the back room data center, the Internet nerve center—network management, operations support, “geek stuff”—has always been a strong category of software because it is needed no matter what advances are made in computing technology. Leading the growth in this category is Juniper Networks, positioned to enable secure, assured communications over a single IP network, grew 54 % to reach $2.1 billion in revenue. Between $100 million and $1 billion in revenue, fastest growing was Secure Computing Corp., concentrating on providing customers with a trusted Internet environment, with an increase of 17 % to reach $109.2 million. Between $10 million and $100 million in revenue, fastest growing was NetQoS, Inc., focused on improving application delivery over wide-area networks, growing 110 % to reach $22.3 million. Next, NUVO Network Management, offering managed services to boost IT performance, saw 39 % growth to reach $13.9 million in revenue. F5 Networks, concentrating on application security, optimization and availability, grew 37 % to $61.8 million. NetPro Computing, focused on the health and control of Windows-based networks, saw 27 % growth to $18.6 million in revenue. And InfoVista SA, positioned for service-centric performance management, saw 19 % growth to $41.4 million.

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Quest Data Analysis Tool to aid Effective Business Decisions

Managers spend up to two hours a day searching for information and more than 50 percent of the information they obtain has no value for them. This study, which was done by Accenture, also stated that at least once a week, managers accidentally use the wrong information.

In a response to this concern Quest Software has released Toad for Data Analysis.

Using a workflow oriented approach, Toad for Data Analysis helps professionals find the correct data and create reports that help organizations make effective business decisions based on quantifiable information. It automates the process of querying and collecting data thus, reducing errors and eliminating redundant tasks.

The new solution gives professionals access and helps them understand data from multiple RDBMS (relational database management system) sources. Designed to operate on SQL Server, Oracle, DB2 and MySQL, Toad for Data Analysis also supports ODBC (open database connectivity), enabling access to many other platforms such as Sybase and Teradata.

Toad for Data Analysis is now available as a stand alone product, with local pricing starting at SGD 1420.

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XBox 360 To Launch Mass Effect Game On Nov. 20

After Halo 3, Microsoft is launching ‘Mass Effect’ game on XBox 360 on November 20. Mass Effect is considered the second exclusive game on XBox after Halo. For this game, Microsoft has tied up with BioWare.

"With ‘Mass Effect,’ BioWare is delivering an incredible next-gen gaming odyssey. Our fans will journey through a vast, futuristic universe as they are challenged to make impactful decisions that will determine the very fate of the galaxy," said Ray Muzyka, chief executive officer, BioWare Corp.

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Hackers Post Embassy, Government E-mail Accounts Online

The governments can’t be safe. Computer Sweden has learned that hackers have posted online username and passwords of over 100 email accounts belonging to embassies and governments.

According to Computer Sweden, the online information consists of access information of foreign ministries of Iran and Kazakhstan and Indian embassies in the US and Russian embassy in Sweden.

Computer Sweden said it spoke to freelance security consultant Dan Egerstad of Sweden who posted the information on the net. "I did an experiment and came across the information by accident," he said. He however denied sneaking into any of the government servers.

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Yahoo! Sees New Shakeout

Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang’s 100 day revamp notice seems to have been taken quite seriously by Yahoo! president Susan Decker. This comes as the ailing Internet company and the darling of Web 1.0 struggles with losing advertiser base and dwindling investor’s faith.

In a new reshuffle yesterday, Decker sent a memo to the staff informing them that the company's top sales executive is on his way out and a new global sales organisation has been created to aid the company in restoring advertisers faith in the company.

Over the last ten months, management shakeup has been a part of Yahoo as it tries to compete with Google, its archrival and also against some startups that are promising. Two months ago, Terry Semel, a long time Yahoo executive resigned in the wake of growing investor dissatisfaction with the company whose market and stock price was only falling down. While Decker, former chief financial officer and head of Yahoo's advertiser and publisher group, became president.

The new person to leave the company is Gregory Coleman, executive vice president of global sales, who will exit the company in February 2008.

Hillary Schneider will lead the new sales division called as Global Partner Solutions. This team will deal with all of the company's partners, including advertisers, agencies, resellers, publishers, ad networks and developers.

"This new group will be charged with creating, delivering and coordinating global best practices for solutions to all of our partners," Decker wrote. "It will also have direct responsibility for our U.S. sales, marketing and business development efforts, including all ad formats, like search, display, video and mobile; all marketing activities; and all customers, including large enterprises and small businesses."

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