Microsoft Office Applications and Data Ownership - Part II

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The growing dominance of Microsoft's BizTalk Server offers an interesting - and very real - opportunity for accelerating the transformation of Microsoft Office Applications into SaaS-anized supply chain tools for small businesses (SMBs).

BizTalk is the leader in enterprise platform integration. Click on the thumbnail to the right to see an abridged version of the Magic Quadrant found in Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for Back-End Application Integration Projects (Gartner, 19 Dec. 2008). This report is so favorable that Microsoft has licensed this publication for prominent display at Microsoft's BizTalk Server website.

Gartner says that Microsoft's leadership is directly tied to the current and forward-looking strengths of BizTalk:

• Brand recognition, global reach, mind share and huge installed base of products that are leveraged for BizTalk Server sales.
• BizTalk Server installed customer base of more than 8,000 enterprises — two-thirds are estimated to be BizTalk Server 2006 Enterprise Edition or newer.
• BizTalk Server is an identified part of two of Microsoft’s largest and most aggressive initiatives: Microsoft’s Oslo technology [a data modeling platform] and Windows Azure Services Platform [a Cloud computing platform].

But Gartner also has cautionary comments:

• Comprehensive, general-purpose metadata management (that is, business process models, component models, data models, applications, services and interface artifacts) will only become available incrementally as future versions of Microsoft’s Oslo technology and Windows Azure extend the capabilities that exist today in BizTalk.
• Currently there are no products for managing and implementing policy and life cycle management integrated with BizTalk Server.

Let's take a look at the following high-altitude slides for better understanding what Gartner is talking about vis-a-vis 'life cycle management'. 

View Microsoft Office Applications and Data Ownership - Part II on Scribd

As mentioned in the slide show, integrating Pardalis' metadata business rules with BizTalk's business rules provides a head start for massively connecting 10's of millions (to say the least) of small businesses to BizTalk's enterprise business activity monitoring. The key is providing small businesses with life cycle, chain-of-custody managment of their own data products. Providing this kind of data ownership to small businesses is the path of least resistance to Ballmer's visions of integrating supply chain competitors.

Harvard survey shows few trust food safety controls

The majority of Americans are aware of the peanut product recall but many are mistaken about which products are involved and few trust food safety controls, according to a Harvard survey ....

The Harvard survey was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and was carried out by International Communications Research (ICR). The researchers conducted the survey by telephone, and contacted 1,283 US adults during the week of February 4 to 8.

For the complete Foodproductiondaily.com article, go to Survey shows awareness of peanut recall but misunderstanding.

NYT: Facebook's Users Ask Who Owns Their Information

Reacting to an online swell of suspicion about changes to Facebook’s terms of service, the company’s chief executive moved to reassure users on Monday that the users, not the Web site, “own and control their information”....

For the complete New York Time's article, go to Facebook's Users Ask Who Owns Their Information.

Update on Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 2:16PM by Steve Holcombe

"Under fire from tens of thousands of users, the social networking site Facebook said early Wednesday it is reverting to its old policy on user information -- for now ...." See the complete CNN article at Facebook backs down, reverses on user information policy.

Jolley: Five Minutes With Bill Marler, Well-known Lawyer, Food Safety Activist

From Chuck Jolley of the Cattle Network:

"Review the huge food recalls of just the past two years and you’ll quickly understand why that hoary old saw We have the safest food supply in the world is quickly becoming a choke point with American consumers and our international trading partners. No matter how often those of us in the food business try to reassure ourselves with that phrase, an increasing number of people are not buying it anymore ....

I called [Bill] Marler to ask a few pointed questions. You’ll find just two themes in this interview. (1) What the hell is going on? And (2) What will be the effects on the cattle industry."

For the full interview go to Jolley: Five Minutes With Bill Marler, Well-known Lawyer, Food Safety Activist.

Cloning passport card RFIDs

From RegisterDanGoodIn on YouTube:

"Ethical hacker Chris Paget demonstrates a low-cost mobile device that surreptitiously reads and clones RFID tags embedded in United States passport cards and enhanced drivers' licenses."

For the full story see The Register article.