Smarter Patterns - A Foundation for Business and Society

We haven't published aything here recently, so I thought I should take a minute to provide a brief update. Our Enterprise Energy/Carbon Management report is now being distributed by leading vendors, and we are getting ready to do a road show or two while working on new webinars that reflect the ongoing changes in the energy management market. We have new papers on workload optimization coming out in a few days, andcontinue to work on client engagements.

The project that is preventing us from publishing here, however, will be revealed in early June September. For now, let's just say it involves patterns to model emerging technology markets. And, it's big. We call it Project STORM.

Update: STORM Insights, Inc was incorporated in DE in June, did a road show to early prospects in July (resulting in our first client commitment) and moved into the Boston University incubator on August 1. More to come in September.

This month I completed an overview of the market for enterprise energy and carbon management solutions, in which I assigned selected vendors to three categories: Tier I, Tier II, and Outliers to Watch. (EECM Report) Another research firm published their assessment of the same market this month and there was little overlap in our conclusions. The reason for the discrepancy is simple, but perhaps subtle enough to require an explanation.

This report was written to help executives in large global enterprises - public or private - who want to monitor, manage, report on, or monetize improvements in energy and resource consumption or carbon footprint reduction. Whether driven by emerging regulations, cost, stockholder concerns, or customer demand, this overview will help the reader to:

• Understand your enterprise energy/carbon measurement, management, and reporting requirements and goals.
• Identify relevant products and vendors to meet your requirements.
• Recognize trends that may impact your planning assumptions and buying decisions.

Availablble for purchase now on our sister site  (www.sig411.com) at EECM report (several bundles with advisory services are available to help you make the right purchasing decision)

or click to request a free copy of the Executive Summary & TOC

I’ve been following the trajectory of IBM’s Watson very closely since the Jeopardy tournament in February, and I think it is starting to get to me. The other day, out of the blue (not big blue, just plain old blue) I heard a voice in my head say “what would Watson do?” This wasn’t in response to a particular problem I was working on at that moment. My mind was clear, I was just starting my day, and yet there was the voice. It was like those times when a song just starts in my head and won’t stop until it is played over and over. (That’s why I refuse to let Spotify or iTunes reveal what I am listening to at any given time).

As an industry analyst, I respect good research. The Institute for Business Value(IBV) at IBM does great primary research, so I never miss an opportunity to get briefed on their work even if it falls outside my normal scope of interest. I spent three hours with them in rainy NYC yesterday discussing the results of their face-to-face interviews with 1,700 Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and I wasn't disappointed.

A week after the publication of an article in the New Yorker by Atul Gawande on the importance of coaches for surgeons and other professionals in fields that don't normally use coaches, the New York Times ran an article that raised the question whether elite athletes really need coaches at all? 

I had a great conversation with Chris Congdon of Steelcase last week. Chris is Lead, Emerging Workplace Strategies and editor of Steelcase’s 360 Magazine.

Steelcase looks at the convergence of people, place, and technology and develops workplace solutions to help “people reach their potential.” From what I've seen and heard, it looks like they are doing a great job.

Some of their solutions focus on embedded technology – e.g. to enable shared presentation capabilities for a team with individual laptops, iPads, etc – while others create spaces that are more conducive to each of the three types of collaboration they consider (inform, evaluate, generate/co-create). I know that as someone who works at home, I need changes in my environment as the task at hand changes. In a group setting the dynamics of the physical space can be critical. For IT professionals, I think Peopleware is still the best reference on this issue (along with A Pattern Language, which is a great general reference guide).

I was impressed by their research, and plan to follow the 360 Magazine articles online. I’m sure we’ll find some great patterns for the wiki, and maybe some surprises, too.

On Saturday, October 1, I was lucky enough to attend a private breakfast with Dr Atul Gawande and a group of healthcare luminaries that included Dr Paul Grundy (Director, Healthcare Transformation for IBM and President of the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative), Dr Nirav Shah (Commissioner, NY State Department of Health) and CMOs from hospitals and healthcare providers. The reception was organized by IBM and preceded Dr Gawande’s lecture at The New Yorker Festival.

Drs Grundy and Gawande

Twenty years ago this month, I wrote a column for Object Magazine - System Design: Lessons from Architecture - that detailed my interest in and experience with the use of patterns as building blocks for architecture and software. At that point, I had built a house using Christopher Alexander's books as my guides. I had also taught many software engineering classes focused on a modular approach to development with reusable components that leveraged best practices as captured in patterns. In the mid-1990s more articles and books appeared in the software engineering domain supporting a pattern-based approach to development, which eventually became the de facto standard for advanced object-oriented development.