As Open Source software continues to penetrate every facet of software business (vendor and consumer) companies now face a challenge in getting a handle on the various open source software that they might be using. In the course of the last three years of my working with many startups or their leaders, I have found […]

Established companies venturing into SaaS business or newbies starting off as SaaS companies have to deal with a lot of new and evolving challenges. Everything that you can possibly think of is different with SaaS model. To say that it is changing the software business is an understatement. Starting with delivery model, architecture, sales, support […]

Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) enacted in 2002 created a watershed moment for companies forcing them to take a critical look at their internal controls and  processes. Executives operating unfettered until then abusing company resources and shareholder money were now asked to account for their actions. Although the mandates under the SOX Act started out murky […]

Data Security breaches, leaks are a frequent news item these days. If it is not a hacker intruding a network, it is disgruntled employees taking data with them when they are let go.  If all else went well, it is a laptop that an employee lost and along with it all the crucial information on […]

One of the key concerns associated with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is and will be data security. The fact that your business data goes out of your network and resides in the software vendor’s data center should warrant concern. But with upfront due diligence and ongoing oversight, you should be able to get you past your inhibitions […]

In the regulatory climate we live in today, by adopting Software-as-a-Service/Cloud based services, business are confronted with two equally challenging choices. On the one-hand, SaaS provides companies with a controlled environment outside the control of their IT organization. The internal IT staff will have no access to the application, the data and infrastructure configuration that […]

If you are customer having a business application like Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft or SAP in production I am sure you have constantly run into this need to clone/replicate Production database. Why would someone need a copy of production instance? Some of the most common reasons are to create a test environment with representative production […]

One of the critical requirement of governance mandates like SOX 404, PCI Compliance, HIPAA and  SAS-70 is that companies manage their provisioning in a more controlled and audited manner. Companies with disparate applications from different vendors are confronted with the challenges around it. As part of my discussions with companies I have been talking to […]

If you are in technology world, specifically in the e-commerce world or in a business that processes credit card transactions, by now, you would know what PCI-DSS is. It stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and refers to a compliance mandate that Credit Card companies including Visa, MasterCard and American Express require companies […]

Iny my series of governance topics today I will go into the the key benefits of effective Change Management and key areas of  the Audit process. Audit is becoming the norm in most companies. Thanx to all the myriad regulatory requirements, SOX, HIPAA, PCI DS, Gramm-Leach-Biley Act (GLBA), California State, Japan SOX, IT Organizations across the […]

Quick Question: What is the most challenging aspect for IT? Few would argue if I said change management is the most critical and the challenging process in the IT world. The same is probably true in business world too,  especially given the rapid pace at which things are changing. The effectiveness of  your change management process […]

In one of my recent conversations with a past customers of mine, amongst other IT challenges we ended discussing the moratorium on changes or locking down the application from any changes. When would you want a change moratorium? Typically a change moratorium is put in place during some critical business events like Compliance Audits, Book […]

After defining what Configuration Management should be in my last post, let us look at what that means to Oracle E-Business Suite. Application Configurations include a lot of switches and knobs within the application besides the IT Infrastructure components like Database, Servers, Processes, Networks, Directories. In Oracle E-Business Suite, the switches and knobs are Profiles, […]

While doing market research for various products that are out there in the market which fall under the umbrella of Application Management for E-Business Suite, I compiled this list of companies that provided solutions in ITSM Service Support area (not necessarily in any particular order) BMC – Remedy for Incident and Problem Management, Atrium CMDB for […]

The main goal of Configuration Management is to provide information on the IT infrastructure to all other processes and IT management. Enabling control of the infrastructure by monitoring and maintaining information on all the resources needed to deliver services. Key Activities Here are some of the key activities performed as part of Configuration Management Planing the configuration management […]

Oracle E-Business Suite is  packaged as one large suite of products irrespective of which products a customer has bought or licensed. There is a history behind this. In the past, up until early releases of 11i, Oracle used to build, test and ship product Family Packs (FP) i.e, Financials, Manufacturing, Projects, CRM, Healthcare, HR to name a few.  Customers […]

While IT is focused on getting their arms around the Application Management problem, the Regulatory mandates like Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), HIPAA, PCI Data Security Standard, FDA 21 CFR Part 11, Gramm Leach Bliley Act, FISMA, BASEL II are pushing the IT and business users to brink with all the myriad of compliance and audit requirements. Having […]

Application Management can mean a myriad of different things to people across the enterprise. ITIL broadly classifies Application Management into Service Delivery, includes Service level management, Capacity Management, Availability Management and Continuity Management Service Support – Incident Management, Problem Management, Configuration Management, Change Management, Release Management all housed in a Configuration Management Database – CMDB If you check the […]

Driven by Globalization and Innovation,  business models around the world have become extremely complex. At the same time various Regulatory mandates have added new dimensions of complexity. Companies that are at the leading edge of the business revolution, demand a myriad of business applications to meet their business, regulatory needs. In meeting  these demands, Enterprise Business […]