Tuesday, February 28, 2006

February Business Report

[business report]

Effective March 1, 2006 we will be launching our marketing strategy in the Calgary area. Our resources are limited so this will be a low key, but highly effective local 4 month program. The purpose will be to build off the entries in the blog, and get some people commenting. Although it has only been two months I feel that the content value is high and we need to start raising the profile with the producers.

This higher profile, I expect, will start the flow of some donations and this experiment will become a defacto operating company. We are more or less limited to the local market at this time due to financial resources. Hopefully we will have some good news soon in which we are able to expand our geographical scope, because Genesys is a global oil and gas solution.

Some time during the month of March we will begin to see the blog fall within the google search results. I will also report the site to yahoo! and other major search engines to build traffic that way as well.

I am very pleased with the quality of the topics being discussed. I foresee no change in this quality as there are many things that need to be decided upon, discussed, researched and communicated through this very effective medium. In terms of content we have only begun. The source of interesting things happening in oil and gas, and in technology, are providing ample writing material.

We have now made some additional decisions regarding the technical architecture. Please review the data located here; some further justification of those changes are as follows.

  • Moved to the Ingres Open Source database. I was concerned with Oracle and IBM's commitment to BPEL. I don't think BPEL should be used in a service oriented architecture.
  • Elimination of AJAX and all but one dynamic language used in non-production code.
One area that I have spent time on is with the PPDM data model and ontology. I have come to the conclusion that these products are not usable for our purposes due to the unique nature of the organizational perspective we use. The JOC does not lend itself to the same manner of dealing with partners, many of the data elements affected as well.

It is therefore necessary to continue with defining the architecture as a pure system. Moving the PPDM into our design alleviates many hours of excellent work done by those people. However, the joint operating committee is just to unique to retrofit a design that was prepared for silo'd organizations. The financial resources budget for the PPDM membership has therefore been moved under the w3c standard, and will be investigated as to what the cost implications of this move involve.

As in February's report, the objective of this months report is to start the development process with some tools and infrastructure.
    • Revenue to the end of February: $0.00
March 1, 2006 budget items. (All costs are in U.S. dollars and include a 33% premium for the development copyright fee.)
    • Sun Grid The first thing we need is a home for the code. The grid provides everything we need in this instance, and the Grid that I selected was Sun's. At $1 per processor hour, a very affordable way to secure the resources we need. I think that our first years requirements would be amply satisfied with 10,000 hours of processing for the remainder of 2006 calendar year. Total requirement = $13,300
    • PPDM (Public Petroleum Data Model) Makes our development life a little easier through a standard database model. Fortunately we have projected revenues of < $1 million, therefore, our fees for membership to access the data model are small. Total requirement = $CANCELLED see note above.
    • Ingres Open Source database and part time DBA, Total requirements = $57,500.
    • Collabnet. I would like to have a generous budget for this critical tool. Provides the code management, community process, project management and issue management. Budget includes tools, appropriate setup and consulting services. Total requirements = $34,500
    • General and Administrative, first 6 months of operation Total requirements = $69,000
    • Membership in W3C Total requirements = $9,500
          • Total Capital and Operating costs estimate, first half 2006... $184,000
Notes:
  • Sponsor, producer, and user commitments are all accepted.
  • Please recall that this community is and will be supported by the producers. Based on an annual $ assessment per barrel of oil.
  • For 2006 the assessment was fixed at $1 per boe per day per year.
  • A company such as Encana in Canada would therefore be expected to support the community to the tune of $700,000 for the 2006 calendar year.
  • These Monthly Business Report budgets are being proposed as a pay as you go basis for 2006 to support the community and ensure the community develops in the manner that is expected.
  • Your donations are greatly appreciated, no donations means no work is being done.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

"The future of digital commons" on MIT video

[intellectual property] (Click on the title of this entry for the excellent MIT video)

Two librarians provide some of the most thought provoking discussion on the topic of copyright law, access to information and the impact these items have on users and creators of intellectual property. Users should understand the key attributes of copyright law and this is a good place to start. Understanding copyright law may become as basic of knowledge as how you now drive to work in the morning. Although the video is a little over two hours, it will be an investment of time that will pay users dividends for many years.

They refer to Larry Lessig's definition of a what a commons is:

  • The character of the resource. (A physical asset is consumed, a commons can be shared.)
  • How the resource relates to a community.
Much of the work that I am doing in this blog and elsewhere can only be done due to the pristine nature of my copyright. My ability to write in open forums and speeches is unconstrained by publishers, academia, employer or any other group claiming ownership rights. This was a difficult exercise for me to complete, and I am not aware of any other industry that is so positioned. I can say and do what I need with the copyright as I please. No one paid for the information, I funded the research myself and therefore no one else has a say, and therefore this community can develop in a completely unconstrained manner in the best interests of its users, developers and the oil and gas producers.

One of the presenters, Ms. Nancy Kranich has published a pamphlet entitled "The Information Commons, A Public Policy Report" that is available here. This is a comprehensive review of the copyright law, information commons and particularly the Internet. It should be read and understood by all those that are active on the Internet. Additional time should be spent reviewing the links on that website for further information.
"The source and origin of copyright law is ingrained in the U.S. constitution. As Ms Kranich says; Two provisions of the U.S. Constitution are specifically directed toward serving this need for information that is so crucial to democracy. The Copyright Clause does so both by giving authors "the exclusive right" to profit by their writings "for limited times," and by providing that after the limited term of copyright expires, works enter the public domain, where they are freely available to all. The First Amendment prohibits government from abridging "the freedom of speech, or of the press."
Yes this is important, and the internet makes it all the more valuable and dangerous. If you scroll down to the bottom of each and every page of this blog you'll note that all these entries are copyrighted. I am extending the work that was done in 2004 to a broader audience, yet able to maintain the copyright by doing this. Therefore all the information contained within this blog is provided with free access, but the ability to prepare a derivative work is forbidden. The only license that will be provided will be to develop the code, and this will be strictly open source but the copyright remains with me and hence the code, but free access is provided. I have placed this notice on every entry of the blog.
"Until further notice visitors providing comments and information to this blog should assume that all information becomes the property of Paul D. Cox and its licensees. This blog represents a derivative work of the research concepts discovered in 2004. All rights revert to the copyright holder Paul D. Cox. This is consistent with the purposes of blogs as identified in google blogger '6.a content ownership'."
The point of this entry is to highlight that the blog comments and entries are copyrighted. The same opportunities exists today as a result of the power of computers, networks and commons principles for any other area of sciences or engineering. I encourage readers to determine their own futures in this new information age.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Dr. Giovanni Dosi, "Sources" Parts III, C.

[Innovation] (click on the title to get a summary of all of Dr. Giovanni Dosi's books in publication.)

What we learned from the first installment of this paper I think is significant. The scope and quality of Dosi's research is unparalleled in the field of innovation. His recognition in Europe, and particularly in Italy reflect the somewhat local nature of his work. However, Dr. Dosi is still very young and is highly involved in the community. I believe his work will be better known the world over as innovation becomes more of a competitive advantage.

C. Technology: Freely Available Information or Specific Knowledge

Dosi notes that a firms focus is placed on the capabilities of the firms. That a firm will apply incremental improvements based on the unique competitive advantages that they use to differentiate their products.

"What the firm can hope to do technologically in the future is narrowly constrained by what it has been capable of doing in the past."
Dosi goes on to identify a key analytical point in the difference between technology and information. Noting that information is a subset of technology. Stating that much of the tacit and specific knowledge regarding what a firm does can not be captured either as the firms proprietary data or publicly available knowledge. It is however mobile in the form of the competitive nature that may draw staff away from a producer, or in the form of copying or reverse engineering, which suggests that information travels quite quickly between firms.

From the point of view of this blog, we see that the oil and gas producers are not oriented culturally to a "sharing" mindset. One that this blog suggests as the key requirement of innovation and expansion of their internal capabilities, and hence production base. The focus is on building this internal capability that provides them with the competitive advantages they are then able to exploit. Clearly this is the manner in which they have been successful in the past.

Nonetheless the oil and gas industry has two anomalies they've never faced before.
  • Substantially higher prices for their product.
  • Greater difficulty in maintaining their production volumes, and most importantly, the production volume demands of the marketplace.
Clearly the elasticity of supply is not what was assumed to be true by economists.

This forms a paradox where the firms technology or information, which has traditionally proven adequate, is no longer capable of sustaining the organization or the market demand. (drawing on reserves faster, over the long term, eliminates the firm)

The paradox, contradiction or conflict is the source of the answer so say the great philosophers. Each producer is building their internal capabilities in isolation. This leads to augmenting the capability by increasing the personnel necessary to conduct the science and engineering. This situation is mirrored throughout the industry with extensive, yet relatively specific capabilities silo'd in each organization. As I noted in the Partnership entry here, the resources, specialization and capabilities of each member of the joint operating committee are not necessarily participating. In fact very little if any knowledge is shared.

I believe this cultural difficulty in sharing is the definition of the problem that the paradox identifies. Holding all of the capability as secret only leads to isolated events in which the science is moved. The collaborative environment in other scientific and academic communities recognizes the value of peer reviews and collaboration. Without them there would be no new discoveries.

But there is a bigger issue here. No one in oil and gas is necessarily able to lay claim to the discovery. If things are kept secret, then for the most part they will stay that way for a short period of time. Eventually being exposed to the rest of the industry the discoverer has no legal protection regarding the efforts that went into the discovery. Copyright law establishes a mechanism that allows the author to claim the discovery, but the idea has to be published to secure the copyright. The purpose of the copyright law is to permit society to build off the basis of the ideas of its citizens.

With the global economy quickly becoming an era of commercialization of intellectual property. It is intellectual property that provides the real tangible value that is necessary for any long term sustainable competitive advantage. This value is not being realized through the secretive means of these oil and gas organizations, and is not providing any value for the global economy because of constrained production volumes and high energy prices.

Dosi goes on to state:
"Once the cumulative and firm specific nature of technology is recognized, its development over time ceases to be random, but is constrained to zones closely related technologically and economically to existing activities." page 1131

leading to,
"Each technological paradigm entails a specific balance between exogenous determinants of innovation and determinants that are endogenous to the process of competition and technological accumulation of particular firm and industries. Moreover, each paradigm involves specific search modes, knowledge bases, and combinations between proprietary and public forms of technological knowledge." page 1131
This isolationism is leading to failure on an industry wide scale. When producers can not replace the production they've produced, that is a failure in the largest sense I can imagine. This industry needs to revisit the means of their capabilities on the basis of this information. Are their economic benefits derived from a hand full of employees, or the world wide oil and gas technology, engineering and scientific understandings.

I can not imagine what the world would look like if Dr. Giovanni Dosi kept his works secret.

In the next entry I will finish off section III with "D. How Organizations Build Knowledge Bases."

What is a joint operating committee?

[Definition] [Joint Operating Committee (JOC)]

An excellent question for those, and particularly the developers, with no first hand experience in oil and gas.

Traditionally the oil and gas industry has formed partnerships to mitigate the capital risk involved in the exploration and production business. These partnerships have also formed as a result of the scope of their facilities growing in terms of land and that land may have been leased by another producer. At which time in all cases, the producers adopt the joint operating committee as the method of management of the physical facility and appoint a Chairman as the operator.

After almost a century, the joint operating committee has become the defacto global organization that is responsible for the operations and control of the facilities. All the agreements and documents are executed between all parties, all financial operations from budgets to costs and capital are controlled by the joint operating committee. This forms the majority of the culture of the global oil and gas industry. And this culture is defined through various industry groups of accounting, land, geological and others that have defined the terminology, business rules etc.

During the 1940's and 1950's oil and gas operations were approaching the size that we all know and love them as today. These required different management and organizational structures to specifically deal with a more efficient manner of management. Hence the hierarchy was formed and grew to deal with the business oriented legal and finance issues associated with their share of the physical properties. Over the years the SEC, accounting boards, and Sarbane's Oxeley layered on more requirements and the joint operating committee became less and less the focus of the organization.

Today the focus of the organization is now more on the quarterly performance and the production volumes predictions of the CEO / CFO. The ability of an organization to focus on the operations requires a consensus between the partners represented through the joint operating committee. It is necessary to vote on the manner of, and approve each phase of the operations at every detail through the JOC and these are done more on an annual calendar or when the paper work gets done.

As you can imagine the confusion and conflicting orientation within the firm leads to more pressing needs and the SEC rules. The joint operating committee languishes with all the authority and power to make a difference, but stagnates due to the nature of the fire alarms at head office.

By moving the accountability of the hierarchy to the joint operating committee. Alignment with the legal, financial, cultural, and operational decision making frameworks eliminates the redundant nature of how oil and gas is currently managed. In addition the focus will fall on the production facilities and the opportunities to innovate.

The Genesys system will provide the collaborative environment for the earth scientists and engineers to innovate. These critical skills can also be sourced from the entire population of producers represented on the JOC and enable the firms to meet the markets demands.

How this move of the hierarchy is orchestrated is really the easy part. The SEC, government and other royalty holders, taxing authorities and Sarbane's Oxeley provide the same thing. Compliance is sought through the publication of business rules. And as most developers will tell you, business rules are the type of work that computers do very well. That is why they are published. As the larger population of engineers and scientists collaborate, discover and innovate, the Genesys system will follow along to provide the compliance through the systems business rules.

In a nutshell that is the joint operating committee and how it operates in the global oil and gas industry and the substance of the copyright that I hold. These research findings have been reflected upon by industry leaders as;

"Solving the largest administrative problem for the past fifty years."
or,
"A new discipline."
So join me here and start this revolutionary way of organizing oil and gas. If you have any questions or comments please post them here for all to benefit.

Friday, February 24, 2006

Ray Kurzweil on MIT video.

[Community]

This video provides a clear picture of our future and is entitled:

Innovation Everywhere How the Acceleration of GNR (genetics, nanotechnology, robotics) Will Create a Flat and Equitable World
By Mr. Ray Kurzweil, who is also the author of the book "The Singularity is Near" the bestseller from 2005 that suggested the convergence of information technologies, genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics are leading to substantially different lives. Among his many unique awards is his recognition and acceptance in the inventors hall of fame. A very entertaining video, one that I highly recommend.

In point form here are the highlights of his speech;
  • Timing is a critical component of success in today's business environment. Noting that Google is in the right place at the right time.
  • Mr. Ray Kurzweil has over time developed a number of mathematic models that he uses to support his discussion.
    • His conclusions / findings.
      • Technology evolves exponentially, non-linearly. However, people perceive technology linearly. This is an important point to remember as people assume the dot com meltdown is only resurfacing. What is happening now is exponentially larger then the run up to 2000.
      • RNAi, (interference RNA) in 5 to 10 years, the benefits should provide longer and higher quality of lives.
      • The paradigm shift rate is accelerating. The shift is achieving 100 years of progress in just the first 14 years of this century (2000 - 2014). We are also going to see 200 times the changes that occurred during the 20th century during this the 21st century.
  • Certain technological trends are predictable and correct. Which wireless standard will become the predominate technology, can not be predicted, however, the impact that wireless will have is very predictable.
    • Applying these attributes to economic principles and specifically to the US debt and GDP provides some interesting perspectives on how today's economic issues are not tomorrow's problems.
  • Information technology will achieve emulation of the human brain in 2013.
  • Exponential growth in the volume of information technologies used will offset the costs. The economy will be predominately based on information technologies in 2020.
  • An intersection of technical disciplines of biology and information technology is happening.
  • "Every form of communications technology is doubling its price-performance, bandwidth, capacity every 12 months." This fact alone supports so much of the underlying changes that we are seeing in these fast paced times. Advanced communication is what separates us from the other animals.
  • IT will be the majority of GNP in 2020's.
  • By 2010 computers will disappear and become ubiquitous.
  • 2002 was the year in which the average age expectancy was 78. By 2017 we may have long life.
These comments provide a strong background for the challenges and times we face in oil and gas. The plurality thesis suggests that the engineering and earth science disciplines will change and advance at a rapid pace in the next 5 to 10 years. I stated that the corporate organization as represented by the hierarchy would be unable to keep up with these changes.

Mr. Kurzweil's presentation shows me that the days of the bureaucracy, of command and control of the corporate mechanisms are in their final days. Although they may appear to be as strong as ever, I would suggest that their capability to deal with their current problems is limited.

The theories represented in this blog are establishing the community that will eliminate the command and control hierarchy's. Now is the time to get involved, find somewhere in this community that you fit and start making the difference that you know you can. If you have organizational budgetary authorization, please do not hesitate to make a donation through this blog to secure the needs of this community.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Standards in a flat world.

A quotation that I find of value. From Thomas Friedman in his book "The world is flat".

"Standards don't eliminate innovation, they just allow you to focus it. They allow you to focus on where the real value lies, which is usually everything you can add above and around the standard." p. 76

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Dr. Giovanni Dosi, "Sources" Parts I, II and III, A) & B)

[innovation] (Click on the title to link to Dr. Dosi's Curriculum Vitae)

Since this blog is about innovation in oil and gas, we should make it the most prominent topic of discussions. With that in mind, I want to expand on the works of Dr. Giovanni Dosi and continue with the research of his work that I started three years ago. I believe that his work has defined the process and methods of innovation in the most effective manner. Therefore, as time permits I will attempt to communicate many of his ideas and thoughts and apply them to the systems development this community is doing here in oil and gas.

Please note that the Plurality thesis contains a large section of these works applied to oil and gas. These can be sourced by selecting the February 2006 archive and selecting the entry for "Plurality Dr. Giovanni Dosi." Please also note that these research summaries are more to inform the reader on the research done, so that the reader may use these as tools in their day to day business and participation in these software developments.

Dosi, G. (1988). Sources, Procedures and Microeconomic Effects of Innovation. Journal of Economic Literature Volume XXVI: pp. 1120 - 1171

If you have access to some databases that hold proprietary data, I highly recommend downloading as much of Dosi's works as you can. This is the main starting point of where Dosi truly began to hit his stride. Recognition after this was a forgone conclusion.

Part I, Introduction

Starting his discussion Dosi dives in and speaks to the motivation that drives the innovative process within organizations. Noting that much of the motivation falls to that one intangible in business, that being a "belief" that the "existence of some sort of yet unexploited scientific and technical opportunities;" provide economic value in excess of its costs." page 1120

Setting out to establish some broad objectives, Dosi then points to the main aim of this work as;

  1. "Identify the main characteristics of the innovation process."
  2. "Identify the factors that are conducive or hinder the development of new processes of production and new products."
  3. "Identify the processes that determine the selection of particular innovation and the effect on industrial structures." page 1121
Lofty objectives that set the stage for the scope of this seminal piece. If we were to identify the main characteristics, the factors that are conducive or hinder innovation, and thirdly, the processes that determine the selection of innovation and its impact on industrial structure we begin to see the value that Dosi's work has the potential of achieving.

Dosi defines two key issues that also provide evidence of the scope of this document and help to define it as a landmark piece. The issues are;
  1. "The characterization, in general, of the innovative process."
  2. "The interpretation of the factors that account for observed differences in the modes of innovative search and the rates of innovation between different sectors and firms, and over time." page 1121
Dosi has therefore framed the scope of his research and clearly undertaken a large project.

Within the context of what would make an innovative producer, Dosi identifies two main characteristics of an innovative company.
  • (a) "capabilities and stimuli generated within each firm and within industries"
  • (b) "broader causes external to the individual industries, such as the state of science in different branches; the facilities for the communication of knowledge; the supply of technical capabilities, skills, engineers, and so on; the conditions controlling occupational and geographical mobility and / or consumer;" and many more.
The perspective of the global oil and gas industry is the focus of this blog and hence this research. In applying and learning from Dosi we need to realize the scope of the academic pursuits within the sciences and social sciences of oil and gas. A key part of the thesis asked where the sciences of physics, geology, geophysics and engineering were heading in the next 5 to 10 years. When we include many of the social sciences involved in business and economics, I feel the importance of Dr. Dosi's work should be foremost in the minds of most of the individuals employed in oil and gas. This also provides for the remarkable opportunity to discover virgin research territory in the areas of these sciences and innovations application.

I also want to reiterate that the context of this blog is to alter the fundamental organizational structure of an oil and gas concern away from the hierarchy towards the joint operating committee. The purpose of this blog is to define the systems that define the organizational structure. With out the new systems developed here, no change in the organizational process can be made and producers innovative efforts remain constrained and difficult.

Part II, Searching for innovations - The general patterns.


Dosi establishes through various statistics the breakdown of the various expenditures incurred in research, applied research and development. These statistics are also broken down between the government, industry, academic research and non-profit institutions.

Nothing of interest jumps out of these statistics other then the annual expenditures seem to be fairly constant over time. They also appear to be sizeably influenced by the American military and space programs. As these two engines of research make a clear demarcation from what the U.S. spends in comparison to other countries.

The consistency of the expenditures from year to year seem to reflect that the amount of research and development spending is constrained by the quality and quantity of the research industry. i.e. spending more money does not necessarily increase the benefits of research and development.

Dosi goes on to note that there are undocumented expenditures incurred in the innovative process of "learning by doing, and learning by using". These are not quantifiable or measurable as they are incurred as required and may be directly associated with the culture of the country and the value assigned to research by the country of origin.

The time frame of this research was 1988 and much has changed since that time. I would particularly assert the value of the Java programming language and the Internet. These two technologies provide a new means of learning by doing and learning by using. Based on the premise of code re-usability, an infrastructure of high quality code has become available through the Internet's revolutionary open source movement. These infrastructures are threatening the large software companies such as Oracle, Microsoft and SAP.

Raising this point and classifying this as a new method of learning by leveraging the works of others, particularly in the java programming language. In a manner of minutes I can download and install state of the art servers, IDE's and frameworks at no cost. The impact of this will begin to bear fruit in all industries as these systems are organized for superior competitive advantages. Leveraging off of the base of Java frameworks that exist today and being planned for tomorrow make most of what Dr. Giovanni Dosi suggests, especially in concert with the Genesys system we are building here, very possible and very real. The missing ingredient is the ability to collaborate and communicate effectively, a.k.a. a system issue.

Part III, Innovation, the Characteristics of the Search Process.

Dosi identifies many of the common characteristics of innovation and notes the critical importance of the economics of technological changes.

A. Innovation as Problem Solving: Technological Paradigms.

Solving problems is the root cause of innovation. This is inherent in most peoples understanding, but Dosi identifies and quantifies the difficulty in moving to an innovative mind-set in the following.
"In other words, an innovative solution to a certain problem involves discovery and creation since no general algorithm can be derived from the information about the problem that generates its solution automatically." page 1126
Or in other words, innovation is not as easy as it appears. Dosi continues,
"Certainly the solution of technological problems involves the use of information drawn from previous experience and formal knowledge, (example, from the natural sciences) however, it also involves specific and un-codified capabilities on the part of inventors." page 1126
Dosi notes the difficulties and complexity of the innovation process and the tie in to the scientific, mathematic and academic pursuits. Drawing on the tacit knowledge of many participants, these collaborations have the effect of releasing the creative process of innovating. The point that I think Dosi is attempting to make here is that this stuff called innovation, no matter what or how you slice it, is not easy. Discovery is a process that takes effort. It is the scope of the effort necessary in the oil and gas industry that the hierarchy is unable to exercise to make these or any discoveries.

The other point that Dosi makes is that when the underlying sciences or engineering paradigms change it has the effect where it can become a major point of innovation, however as noted in the prior paragraph, that innovation will take substantial tacit and explicit knowledge and effort.

B. Technological Paradigms and Patterns of Innovation: Technical Trajectories.

Dosi states
"A crucial implication of the general paradigmatic form of technological knowledge is that innovative activities are strongly selective, finalized in quite precise directions, cumulative in the acquisition of problem-solving capabilities... Let us define as a technological trajectory the activity of technological process along the economic and technological trade-offs defined by a paradigm." page 1128
It could be argued that the discovery of new sources of energy has been constrained by the very low cost of fossil fuels. The opportunity to discover "better" sources of energy to power the world will have to wait until the financial resources and focus is on commercial levels of cost recovery of those technologies. This would apply equally to the pursuit of exploration in remote areas, deeper wells, bypass gas and other methods and sources of energy.

Dosi suggests these economic / technical tradeoffs affect the trajectories of innovation and are influenced by prices that move the trajectory upward. Clearly the fossil fuel prices are reallocating the financial resources to facilitate innovation and an upwards movements in the economic / technical trajectories.

The final point that Dosi notes in this section is that the innovations are sometimes sourced from differences in the underlying technologies. A good analogy for describing this would be when an assumption is altered, then the conclusion is also altered. The underlying technological cost or performance has a direct influence on the performance trajectory of the items being studied and therefore, are a ripe field for innovation.

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Monday, February 20, 2006

Technical decision.

[Technology] [Decision]

Based on my research and understanding, I am now able to define the technical architecture a little finer. This entry will summarize the architecture to date and define the current changes.

I am eliminating the use of two "technologies" or "methods" of programming from all of the code that will be written. I am also including the limited use of one "non-typed" scripting language.

  • Based on the technical vision of this blog and a brief discussion noted here, I am eliminating any and all use of "BPEL" or business process execution language, defined here.
  • The use of AJAX "Asynchronous Javascript with XML, will also be eliminated.
I see these two technologies as stop gap measures that solve today's problems, only to open a pandora's box of issues down the road. In there place Java Applets will be used for the management of asynchronous messaging. Our ability to control the virtual machine on the clients browser provides a more robust system capability at the expense of higher development costs.

The value proposition of the Genesys system essentially allocates these development costs to each barrel of oil equivalent produced. The oil and gas industry is on the verge of breaching $3 trillion in annual revenues. Costs of development will not be an issue, however, system performance and reliability will.

The use of complementary technologies is permissible on the following basis.
  • The Groovy scripting language is a derivative of the Java language. (JSR-241) It can be used in limited testing and other uses, however, never on production builds. Essentially allowing the developer to demonstrate new concepts, or, proof of concepts in a more robust and effective manner. Since groovy uses the same frameworks of the Java language, this provides an effective interim initial step for the developer to implement the code in essentially Java and provide value for the final development.
Therefore in summary, the technical decisions that have been made to date are as follows.
  • Hosting via the Sun Grid. (Reliability, security and data security.)
  • Solaris.
  • Apache Maven.
  • Java 5.0 moving to Mustang when reasonable. (Annotations and Generics are essential.)
  • Ingres relational database. (Oracle's promotion of BPEL is disconcerting.)
  • Sun Microsystems GlassFish Java EE 5.0.
  • Sun Microsystems Web Server.
  • Preference towards Netbeans, Java Studio Creator, Java Studio Enterprise.
  • BPEL and AJAX are banned.
  • Groovy as a scripting language is excluded from production code.
This is the current status of the technical decisions made to date.

Decisions being made in the short term are;
  • Toplink vs. Hibernate. (Oracle's Toplink is included in GlassFish.)
  • Evaluation of BEA.
  • Licensing use and conflicts.
I would solicit opinions and comments regarding the decisions made and the future decisions to be made from readers.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

System security, continued

The heading of this post will lead you to a tutorial paper on Elliptical Curve Cryptography. The document discusses the issues regarding encryption of data. As time passes the value of traditional encryption methods becomes less and less secure. The solution would be to expand the key size to enforce higher levels of security, however, that appears to be providing a solution for only 20 years after the larger bit length becomes standard.

ECC provides the user with progressively steeper levels of security with much smaller keys. As opposed to 2048 bit keys, ECC can provide the same level of security as RSA, with only a 248 bit key. Providing the following advantages:

"This means, in turn, less heat, less power consumption, less real estate consumed on the printed circuit board, and software applications that run more rapidly and make lower memory demands. Leading in turn to more portable devices which run longer, and produce less heat."
Why is this mentioned? Sun Microsystems have incorporated ECC into the next version of thier web server. Therefore, ECC will be the standard method of encryption of all data elements of the Genesys system.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Plurality Subtle implications of technology

Note to Reader. I am publishing the "Plurality" document I frequently refer to in this blog. This will enable searching based on the text within the entire document. The word count is approximately 35,000 words and is provided as background for the discussions.

A number of technology changes have occured since it was originally published in 2004. IBM has chosen not to support this effort, and as a result I am replacing the components of the technology architecture as the opportunities and needs require. We are moving to the Sun strictly for their support of Java, and the synergies of the visions. As I recently noted, Ingress would be the database that we will use. Other then that, I have chosen to host the entire development and operating environment on Sun's Grid and as funds become available we will secure those resources.

References are to the literature noted in the bibliography. So here it is, warts and all. I hope you enjoy it, any and all comments are welcomed and appreciated.


Thank you



Paul Cox



Today we need to better understand the subtlety of the implications of technology. Organizations are entering a time period where technology is providing a level of infrastructure that permits its proliferation and adoption that is firstly insidious, ubiquitous and with possible or probable implications that are not fully understood? Three generic examples are cited to show the cause and effect of technologies on an unsuspecting audience of users and businesses.

They are, the downloading of MP3's and Apple's iTunes, PowerPoint as a presentation tool and SourceForge.net. The first two, MP3's and PowerPoint contain warnings of not fully understanding the impact the technologies will have, with the third example expressing the threat that self organizing teams present as an organizational alternative to the comparatively inefficient hierarchical based organization.

All these examples share the same symptomatic cause and effect that the user is attempting to achieve, that is, to acquire what they want through the path of least resistance. The other major new thinking that may develop is that intellectual property and knowledge management are by far the most important aspect of a firms assets, and that they are very temporary as an advantage, aging in quarters, not years. Included within these intellectual property attributes are the organizational innovative capability, or appropriability and IT resources. I am citing this point to reflect that the competitive nature in business today is rapidly changing on all fronts.

MP3's and Apple's iTunes.

The following is a good example of how technology can become disruptive to a well-entrenched business model. Downloading of MP3’s and the effect it has had on the music industry should be well known at this point. The phenomenon of least resistance showed itself through otherwise very honest and hardworking individuals, knowingly breaking the law. These thefts were justified in the users minds by a variety of excuses, and with all that has happened to mitigate the effects, little if anything has been done to stem the waning tide in the revenue of the musicians and music companies. This is also not a recent phenomenon, copying records onto cassette tape was a concern in the 1970’s with the development of the cassette recorder. The downloading issue has been raised as a result of the selection of music made available through the networked user seeking the path of least resistance.
Initial attempts to shut down the vehicles (Napster) proved fruitless as the website's were only replicated quickly, and in far greater numbers, effectively providing users with more outlets in which to acquire their music.

Apple iTunes has provided a strong business model that appeals to the user and provides them with the ability to use their music in the fashion that they have always wanted. This is currently working effectively, with the full support of the law and under contract with the music distribution companies. In hindsight the record companies, in seeking Apple's help, might soon realize they invited a Trojan horse into their camp.

iTunes appears to be the application that users and musicians need as a portal for their communications and distribution of their products. This enabling an alternate solution for communication and distribution of music, which might eliminate the “music business” as represented by Time Warner, Universal and Sony.

All of the machination's conducted by the music industry to control the intellectual property of their distribution copyright, has only provided the music user and musicians with the ammunition and motivation to further eliminate any goodwill towards the music industry. Which musician will be the first to distribute their new music to their fans via iTunes, and how much less will they be asking? ITunes is the only system that maintains the musicians rights of intellectual property, which is another aspect that the competition does not appear to understand. Disintermediation of the music industry will most certainly be the result of these activities.

NASA's comments regarding the dangers of PowerPoint.

We have witnessed the recent NASA comments regarding PowerPoint presentations that place that product in the category of the real “killer app”. I interpret NASA's comments not so much as blaming PowerPoint for the failure of the space shuttle, but more for the phenomenon that users would seek the path of least resistance in getting their message across. We all inherently understand the point that NASA is attempting to make.

The ubiquity of PowerPoint presentations is as a result of their inherent ease of use and effectiveness at selling a message. Any attempt to eliminate the product from within an organization would be devastating to its internal communicative capability. The product works effectively for the reasons that it is used for.

The future implications are that any attempts to eliminate PowerPoint would be more negative than positive, the PowerPoint presenter and viewers need to be cognizant of the limitations of the application, which unfortunately they now are.

SourceForge.net

SourceForge is not a name that many people would have heard of before. And many will not hear of in the future. This is good example of how minor changes in a business model or technology could have significant implications on how the organization of commercial enterprises becomes redundant and therefore effectively disrupted.

Sourceforge.net is the open source vehicle used to download and manage the open source code that a user wants. It is also the forum where like-minded developers organize and work to build the better, and “free” code that is provided to anyone who wants it. This is strictly on a volunteer basis with the altruistic objective of building better software and is not guided in any form or fashion as a result of anyone’s policies. The Linux, MySQL, Darwin, and other software are being developed through this medium. Self-organizing groups of developers, motivated by similar causes, located throughout the world are tied together through CVS (Concurrent Version Systems) to produce the code they seek. Most never meet the other developers, ever.

This environment has developed over the last few years from a small community to a reasonably moderate size of 800,000 developers working on 80,000 different projects. Mostly organized in an ad-hoc and informal manner, these developers have produced software of the quality that Linux is now the alternative operating system used by IBM, Sun and other vendors, and is beginning to be the preferred system for many corporate servers and considered for the desktop.

SourceForge.net is so significant that it may render the corporate IT infrastructure unworkable in the short to mid-term. This is a pretty bold statement regarding a completely irrelevant and mostly unknown organization. The announcement and an explanation of how this might occur is as follows.
On December 16, 2003 SourceForge.net distributed the following announcement to their membership through their site wide mailing list. The announcement had three components of the same theme.

These were:

  • Donations could be made to the overall SourceForge.net organization.
  • Donations could be made directly to the project of your choice.
  • Donations could be made to the specific developer of your choice.
This one change in the business model of SourceForge.net will provide the economic means for the developer to live in what he may have always considered to be his career objective of full independence, freedom and a means of financial independence. This will provide developers with the confidence and capability, and who may have been moonlighting through SourceForge.net as a means to hone his / her craft, with the motivation to commence drafting that resignation from their day job and securing their long term intellectual property value.

This, of course, won't be all of the corporate IT staff, just the ones that have achieved the level of sophistication and capability that can and usually is measured in the quantum's of 10, 20 and 30 fold to the standard. The technical workers that preferred to work on building their craft outside the organization they work for.

Although the losses may be limited to a handful, they are the critical ones who are known for their capability and will be able to make significantly more money through SourceForge.net than through any other means they could have imagined. They will be further motivated by the fact that their previous employer may become their greatest supporter. Which opens the other side of this threat, namely the opportunity for the companies to acquire several of these high quality developers through

SourceForge.net.

Recently SourceForge.net started a company that provides software tools for corporations to hire and manage the source code through SourceForge.net. The following two url’s are to that company, VA Software and provide the information necessary to understand this opportunity. Of particular interest are the members of the board of directors. (http://vasoftware.com/)

Corporations may look back on their decision to use Linux and other open source code as their biggest error. After all what were they thinking, you don't get anything for “free”!

IBM WebSphere technology’s introduction in oil and gas.

There is a need to look at the past ten years in a different perspective in order to fully appreciate the scope of the concern that this research has for the hierarchical organization. This research is asserting the impediment to further progress is the hierarchical organizational structure or bureaucracy. And by invoking Dr. Anthony Giddens Structuration theory, which states society, individuals and organizations need to move forward together, or not at all, any disparity in the pace of change in one has to match the others, or failure occurs. Dr. Orlikowski’s model of technology structuration also becomes progressively more important during this discussion.

It is implicit in this thesis’ hypothesis that at this time, society and individuals are or have moved on, and the organization, as represented in the hierarchical corporate organization is impeding further progress and performance. Alternate organizations are forming, or can be formed quickly and efficiently to eliminate the need for the organization in its hierarchical form.

The hierarchical organization is directly supported through many tacit and explicit support structures. Key among them is the ERP system that represents the largest single IT investment of an organization. Support systems that provide the hierarchical capability, and specifically the ERP system, are now under direct threat of an insidious and contagious technology. This technology accelerates the organization’s performance to that which is matched by the performance attributes and expectations of society and people. Or as Dr. Dosi (1988) states, “technical progress generally exhibits strong irreversibility features.” This “progress”, as demonstrated in the prior technology examples is impossible to stop and needs to be fully understood and embraced as the only tactical and strategic method of dealing with it. (p. 1144)

There has been much debate in the past few years as to whether technology was evolutionary or revolutionary. These past years have provided cold comfort to those who believed the best days of technology are behind us and that will be the end of the bubble, and the geeks. I am asserting that the technology revolution sustained a serious blow to its credibility and capability during the past four years. The only requirement for the technical revolution to continue is for the coup to trigger the signal. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

I perceive these technologies to be a threat to the status quo of an organization because of the inherent ability of the technology to reproduce itself quickly. A good analogy would be the differences between a user that is networked and a user that is not. Contrast the abilities and productivity of a worker in the networked world with one of 10 years ago, where no public network, applications or communications occurred, compared to the ubiquity of today. No one would deny the impact that the Internet has had on an individual’s productivity. The easy access to abundant and inexpensive data and information, communication and new applications has provided a base of infrastructure that has facilitated innovation in all forms. This analogy is strengthened giving the significant impact that Dr. Dosi’s work on innovation will have in the future.

The analogy of the worker over the past ten years is directly applicable in this instance. The difference being the individual is replaced for the purpose of the analogy, and represented by the organization. As opposed to having independent and unconnected islands of information and capability, there is a collective and co-operative interconnection between trading partners where more of everything is shared and learned through the enhanced collaboration of internal and external, self-organizing teams.

Today many individuals have sought refuge in the collapse of the dot-com bubble to justify their refusal and incapability to fully exploit the technology resources that they have been provided. An inherent inability to learn the technology is a phenomenon associated with older generations that have a complacency or satisfaction with the status quo. This is leading them to be functionally illiterate in the working world of today, with only a vested pension, years of service or rapidly depreciating tacit knowledge that enables them to maintain their illusion of technology. Ultimately this will be at significant cost to those individuals.

This scenario is not an alternative for the organization. Failure will occur swiftly to those organizations that cannot compete against the swiftness and productivity of self-organizing teams.
Revisiting the earlier comments about SourceForge.net reflects few organizations could be organized with 850,000 developers working on 80,000 projects. The key is not so much the volume, but the associated quality of the products. Linux is unquestionably the champion in comparison to the Microsoft Windows alternative as are many of the open source products. To now transform the organization into a method for developers to earn their living may be the most productive and effective means of deploying those resources. The benefits derived from this organization can be distributed over larger populations of users and in collaboration with like-minded individuals or organizations.

Like many of the individuals that refuse to understand, learn and exploit the technologies of today, some corporations may decide to ignore the opportunity and focus on the threats that are introduced through these technologies or reflect that it is not particularly relevant. However, unlike the individuals described as rejecting technology, through the competitive marketplace corporations will be rendered ineffective and inefficient far quicker than their human counterparts.

Application of this point regarding oil and gas is particularly revealing. Through the process of this research it is apparent that the susceptibility of the industry to this risk is high. The saying that to be forewarned is to be forearmed might be pertinent and should be heeded by industry.

One point that this research has noted, is that this issue has created a polarizing effect between members of the companies. The scope of change crosses all boundaries within an organization.
The senior IT managers are almost unanimously concerned about the possibility of the toolset rendering the technical infrastructure ineffective. Their efforts to have an ERP system function effectively as required in these large organizations has been tremendously difficult and is not something that should be experimented with. Some of the comments regarding the research are:

  • We have that all operating in our company now.
  • This is too significant a change to be contemplated by anyone other then the CEO, CFO and CIO.
  • Unwilling to support or sponsor the research. Emphatically unwillingly.
In many ways they have worked to fulfill their obligations to the company and now are subjected to serious threats that are beyond what they have the authority to consider. They are the managers, not the change agents.

The following is a direct response to the issue of management push back just described, and was cut from a .pdf document and is quoted verbatim.

“Web services are programs that allow systems to interact with each other over a network. They leverage open standards and the power of the Internet to allow businesses to interact with each other more easily than ever before. Because businesses have a rapidly growing need to work more closely together, the ability of Web services to support that activity in a standard, well-defined manner, have generated an enormous amount of interest and activity in the Web services arena.”

“Of course, along with all the excitement comes a great deal of buzz, which can easily make you think that Web services are just another over-hyped technology. Although there is hype surrounding some aspects of Web services, Web services and the underlying XML technologies really do have tremendous value for today's enterprise.”

“In this tutorial series we will show that Web services, while not a silver bullet, may change forever the way you integrate business processes. This applies to integrating with other companies' processes or with your own internal processes. They are the next logical step in the evolution of the Web. With Web services, we are moving to a new stage of e-business where businesses can exchange services and integrate business processes with one another.”

“This brings the issue of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) to another level, where you can incorporate multiple companies into a single business process, as well as more easily incorporate multiple business processes from one company into a single process.”

“Driven by these important business needs, the Web services world is evolving rapidly and there is a great deal of innovation, clarification, and specification occurring. Among the important developments are the following:”

These direct quotations are from an IBM document, the italics were added to highlight the parallel comments to the warning contained within this research report. It concludes the introduction by stating

“In short, IBM’s “WSDK” provides an entry-level platform and supporting toolset that make it simple and straightforward to create Web service-based systems. It will let you explore this emerging world of Web services and see what all the excitement is about.”

Source is page 2 of “ws-intwsdk51ltr.pdf from IBM.

This comment is written by IBM and reflects a similar message to the one being presented. The message is that IBM is providing this infrastructure; along with their Eclipse development environment to developers for free, which reflects two further points that I impute from this and other observations. The customers in many industries are resisting the changes that these toolset and technologies introduce, and IBM is moving the product into the hands of the developer in order to ensure that IBM earns a substantial position in the marketplace of web services and get the ball rolling in a difficult technology politically and conceptually, but not technically.

In reviewing both Giddens and Orlikowski’s theories of structuration (and understanding the time frame of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s in which they were written) one recognizes the absolute brilliance and value of these individuals’ work. A comprehensive review of their models is highly recommended. However their brilliance may be overshadowed by the efforts of IBM to deal with specific issues regarding the technology inherent in Domino and Notes over the past two years. In retrospect I believe there is a tacit understanding of Orlikowski’s theories represented by IBM “middleware” product strategies. IBM’s inability to penetrate the marketplace with Lotus Notes as envisioned has been a frustration to its advanced users and developers as well as, we assume, IBM.

Overcoming these problems and applying Orlikowski’s model is clearly the strategy that is being employed very effectively by IBM. It is also not surprising that much of Orlikowski’s consulting work has been in the area of the deficiencies that organizations experienced in integrating Lotus Notes.
IBM has as much to lose from Web Services as they do to gain, as they operate in a very competitive marketplace. IBM poorly handled Microsoft and the changes due to the introduction of the PC in the 1980’s. This lead to a significant decline in their organization and in the early 1990’s, recall they were barely able to register mention to the “might” of Microsoft and Intel. This paper would assert that IBM came too close to meeting its demise and has learned substantially from that lesson. Applying the velvet glove and reacting to market changes is no longer their modus operandi. They are aggressively changing the market landscape in their favor to ensure their competition remains behind.

It is critical to understand that Giddens structuration suggests that power be asserted to create new capabilities for the changes in organizations to occur. Through IBM this power has been exercised and the capability exists. The only requirement remaining at this point is for the organizational change to occur. On the basis of this theory these changes will occur with or without management support.
During her consulting Dr. Orlikowski frequently referred to the work of Thomas H. Davenport. This work documents that collaborative computing does not lead to collaborative work environments. Policies and procedures need to be set by management to facilitate collaboration. Key to the policies is the need for alignment of collaborative incentives, training and organizational culture is consistent with the toolset.

Organizations may believe their ability to control technology introduction is through the restriction of financial resources necessary for users to acquire the license to Workplace. This also has been considered and dealt with at IBM in the following manner. One form of the license that is available to developers is an "Extranet Server License" that provides the ability to license it to as many “outside users” as possible. This, of course, is at no cost which immediately waives the token $93 charge for the license. Therefore if I as the president of Genesys® deem someone a consultant of Genesys®, and provide them with a fully paid user license, this provides them with further unlimited use of the server and software and allows them to distribute the Workplace software to anyone, anywhere and for whatever reason. Or alternatively, this author could send certain staff an URL to Genesys®, server that permits them to use the product as they see fit, and this could in turn, in a very short period of time, enable Genesys® to have each and every staff member in your organization working off this product at the total cost to Genesys® of $93 and your organization $0.00. Astute technical readers will learn that this entire process can be conducted initially through port 80 (Web Browsing). This is, in my opinion, a reflection on the importance and value that IBM has placed on Web Services as their future and a very well executed and implemented product strategy.

To further exacerbate these issues, Workplace provided upwards of 80% reductions in phone calls, phone messages and conventional internal emails. This is mentioned on IBM’s website demos. This is certainly a significant advantage and provides a capability to concentrate the overuse of those channels of communication. However, it should be evident that Workplace provides a far more efficient mode of communications then the other channels. This creates an even greater issue with respect to the impact that Workplace could have on an unsuspecting producer. Understanding the user’s propensity to seek the path of least resistance, Workplace has the potential to revolutionize the organization’s communications as well. This is one of the key aspects of the ability of the “other” participants on the joint operating committee to be able to use another producer’s capability if introduced to this facility. The ease of extending the collaborations between committee participants will enable the acceptance and use of the toolset.

Of particular interest will be the management discussions that are carried out during their various meetings. To now conduct these meetings asynchronously codifies the understanding and reflects the ability to have individuals that would otherwise not be able to participate learn and contribute to the discussions. A further capability is the ability to reduce managements time to the salient points that need to be addressed, and eliminate the management time required for physical attendance, the logistics of attendance and the unnecessary time lost in scheduling.

This tool’s power is unmatched in this author’s opinion. With this power comes significant gains in competitive advantages to those that are able to implement the technologies effectively, and disaster to those companies that are unable to pro-actively deal with this threat.

Resistance is futile. The cause of current resistance is clearly understood. Companies have struggled for several years, and maybe for a decade to have the promise of ERP systems operational and functioning within their organization. From what I have seen in a few instances the results have been very successful. Web Services now challenges the entire infrastructure of the installed base of applications, communications and systems infrastructure that are otherwise in excellent condition and in many instances at the beginning of their useful life.

The challenge that Web Services presents is two fold. The managers are not interested in tearing down what is operationally efficient. Why would they? Secondly, the infrastructure is under attack by an insidious technology that is impossible to ignore, yet has the potential, if not managed pro-actively, to create serious issues for the current software infrastructure and organizational structure. What purpose will there be for a structured hierarchy with its associated bureaucracy when self-organizing teams are able to perform more efficiently and effectively? An ERP system designed for facilitating the hierarchy is just as redundant.

The moment in time that an organization realizes this technology was introduced somewhere in their organization, and as a result of the manner of its use, the questioning of the integrity of the organization’s data begins, or not. It should be asked as well, how many developers have downloaded these technologies from IBM and conducted the Web Services training that is being offered for free?
This scenario may occur in a short period of time, or not. It should be asked where within the organization will this first appear? Will it be in the scientific areas, or the financial? The purpose of this research is to plan a proactive change management and knowledge management procedure to install the Workplace and IBM infrastructure toolset within the organization. Ensure that it meets the criteria of the management’s policies, that those policies in turn are designed to support the exploitation of the technology. These planning components are contained within Genesys® Software Corporation’s February 2003 ERP proposal’s recommendation of the “study period”.

In Dr. Noel Tichy’s book, he references Kaplan (1964), which states. “I have found that if you give a little boy a hammer, he will find that everything needs pounding.” (p. 291) However, this comment also adds significant credence to the issues discussed in this document namely that IBM’s workplace tool may be picked up by individuals seeking the alleged path of least resistance. And just as the little boy hammered everything, individuals will find the tool effective in many applications affecting their work, further exacerbating the issues regarding the ability of organizations to deal with these problems without the appropriate planning and strategy formulation.

It is this author’s opinion that much of the change management initiatives that are driven by SAP integration are to facilitate the tools use. I believe this to be symptomatic of the Theory X method of management in that people need to be monitored and controlled in order to be productive. The Theory Y implementation would assume that people want to work and only need to be supported to do that work. Theory Y is consistent with what Dr. Dosi has asserted as required for innovation.

In the previous analogy of the boy with the hammer, if the staff where to find the “hammer” or in this instance, the Workplace tool, would they soon learn that that a square peg will never fit into a round hole? (The SAP application?) I frequently refer to the behavior of groups as that which is consistent with how the Buffalo were almost rendered extinct. That the analogy of the abuse of the Buffalo is not dissimilar from the current expectations of consumers regarding energy. When the individual sees the Buffalo analogy they begin to appreciate the industry clearer, at which time I point out why the analogy is not valid. The analogy is rendered invalid when it is explained that the Buffalo were a renewable resource, had abundant alternatives readily available, and the economy did not live or die with or without its existence. These two analogies combined reflect another odd behavior. The behavior was the North American Natives effectiveness in killing Buffalo by running them off a cliff. It somehow draws the conclusion that SAP’s behavior appears consistent with the Native Americans. My point is this, it begs the question, what would have happened to the Buffalo if they just stopped running? Today companies have to stop the SAP styled Buffalo jump and consider other alternatives.

Overall there is some good news. There is actually very good news in that Web Services are able to interface with legacy ERP systems in a very progressive manner. This technology can be managed in an effective manner to initially build off the legacy ERP and provide a direct transition over a reasonable period of time to accommodate the organizational and incremental technical change. This requires proactive management in the form of the appropriate change management initiatives that facilitate the innovations that provide the future sustained competitive advantages of the firm. These change management initiatives need to be orchestrated by management through the appropriate “change agents” (Genesys®) providing the counter management thinking to achieve the drive to change, and technology development.

Being the “Change agent” is where Genesys Software Corporation has positioned itself in order to offer these software development and research services as a web services integrator to oil and gas producers. Please review the Genesys Software Corporation strategy summary provided in the February 2003 ERP proposal. It is also explicitly stated in Genesys®, February 2003 that these technologies need to be studied and adopted. The value proposition and overall strategy remain as they were documented in February last year, only the urgency in which firms should act is being revised. Genesys® has developed a full service solution to this issue, and is prepared to provide those potential clients that express an interest through the distribution of this research report.

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