Asimblogged.com

Check our Website

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:10:00 +0000

Our coporate website is now ready. It can bee seen here and u can read abt all of our projects in real Digital Task Force style:-).

The public Informationbase (OIB) - beta

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:49:00 +0000

One of our solutions are The public Informationbase (OIB), which now in a beta-version and u can see it here.

It consist the most of the public "Blanketter" and many of them can be used online.

Moreover consist the OIB some of the business processes (Arbejdsgangsbanken) in the Muncipalities. I blog about this anonther time.

New job

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:01:00 +0000

Hello to all the geeks.

I know; long time; no blogging:-) One of the reason is that I have been granted with a new child; Younas and he is 3 months now. I will from now be more active.

For your information I have since 1th of April been employed as Chief Consultant at Kommune Holding A/S. I am involved on different large and very exciting it-projects for the Danish municipalities. - I will be back!!

New info about B103

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 08:58:00 +0000

There have been a lot of discussion about B103 and the consequences of primary ODF vs OOXML. The National IT- and Telecom Agency have prepared a lot of analysis, documentation, tests etc. about the two document standards.

The latest are guidelines for the public instutions, who most from the new year be able to RECEIVE documents in the two formats. The guidelines can be downloaded here. Epecially the chapter about tendoring is interesting.

I use MS Word 2003 and can read OOXML documents. If somebody sends my ODF-documents; I must forward it to our support-departement, who must convert it to .doc-format for me.

To outsource or not to outsource to India

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:30:00 +0000

The CIO-magazine have two very interesting articles named Seven Reasons Why Outsourcing to India is Good for Your Business and Eight Reasons Why Outsourcing to India Could Hurt Your Business. The articles summarize the benefits and challenges in outsourcing and the points can be usen in generally outsourcing considerations, not only in outsourcing to India.

One of the main ideas is to seek outsourcing-partners in other parts of the world than India, like Latin America, Eastern Europe, China and Asia.

SOA-thoughts from IBM Softwareday 07

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:51:00 +0000

I participated again in the annual IBM Softwareday. The headline this year was "Is your SW-strategy a Business strategy". Nice headline; buy IBM products and u will get a good business:- )

The most of the presentations was introduced with comments on open standards, the Document format-game and the judgement and fines from EU to MS; yes all with focus on Microsoft. One of the new initiatives was a annual price to the most innovative use of IBM products, which was given to Odense municipality for integrating 17 applications to one portal for the employees.

I followed the SOA-track titled Flexibility for the sake of business , which was the track with the least following in contradaction to the last year, where the SOA-track was the most popular. The most visited track this year was about portals, web 2.0 and the new Lotus Notes 8 titled "Get the full potential of your employees".

In the SOA-track there were presentations from three interesting cases from Coloplast, Torm and Actavis. The track was introduced by a demo of a BPM-based portal for a Establish Customer-proces, where the Customer lead has a view on all status, targets, Performance Indicators etc. At red lights must the lead take action by clicking further to online statistics, analysis and change the business rules. It looked real cool and benefit-full, but BPM SOA is the most mature state in SOA.

The initial scope for Coloplast has been on integrating their Oracle EnterpriseOne (ERP-system) and Siebel CRM in different locations global wise with use on IBM Websphere Proces Server (with ESB). The principle was to use lean (=clean) ERP and CRM-systems and implement the rest in a SOA-environment. The benefits are standardization and clean ERP and CRM-systems. More over have they now created the fundament for the future SOA-work, where they will work with BPM etc. There governance have almost only focus on the it-side, because the business-side is not matured yet.

Torm have really focus on one SOA-based Workplace for their employees in one portal, which is really benefitfull because of the very competitive environment, where the fleet rates for fuel change very fast. All their applications as Navision, Notes etc. (one interface) are integrated and presented in one Portal based on Websphere. One of the main benefits with Websphere is, that it is role based and procedure supporting, which allignes perfect with Saban Oxley, SOA-Governance… real good idea.

Actavis is a enterprise in the pharma-industry and they also mentioned the importance of process focused SOA, since 25’% of their products prices goes to validated processes.

The slides can be downloaded here.

New tech decisions for important CMS/portals in Denmark:

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:16:00 +0000

- MS Office SharePoint Server (MOSS 07) for the National Citizen Portal
- The Open Source Plone for the many sites and portals of the Ministry of Science, tech and development

The Danish IT Citizen portal, IT-borger.dk is already implemented with Plone.

By this the MOSS 07 and Plone substitutes Oracles WCS og Stellent. One of the arguments are, that the new platforms are supported by more vendors than Oracle, which according to CW, is mainly supported by one big vendor in Denmark.

Integration model for the Citizen and Companies Portal

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 07:52:00 +0000

Last week I participated in the Citizen and Company portal conference arranged by The Digital Taskforce.

It was a very interesting and informative conference. The integration to the two portals should be done by the common integration model based on Link or IFrame. It is not really recommended to use WSRP yet, because of its immatureness and challenges in security by using SAML 2.0.

The integration model is almost finished by its first version and consist good descriptions of the processes, roles, requirements and guidelines. Especially the Appendix A and B consists guidelines for cookies, visual integration, languages, messages, navigation, styling, security (primary SAML 2.0 and SSO) etc.

Our Agency have a big role in the Citizen portal, since we are preparing EasySMS, Document Box and User Administration (first SSO/SAML 2.0), which are central components in the portals. More over will we deliver important services to be published on the portals.

Testing of ODF and EOOXML

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 06:04:00 +0000

The pilot testing of exchange of editable textdocuments formats is started. U can follow the testing and evulation here.

MIT offers more than 1.000 free online courses

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 08:22:00 +0000

MIT offers more than 1.000 free online courses under its OpenCourseWare project. For every course there is access to lecture presentations, notes, recommended readings and assignments. You can also download complete .ZIP files, that contain the same documents that are in the web-version of an OCW course.

The most interesting courses are from Sloan School of Management. Check out here! I found following courses interesting: Technology Strategy, Integrating eSystems & Global Information Systems and IT and Business Transformation.

Outsource to Pakistan + some news for the OS-geeks

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:40:00 +0000

Since I am crazy about outsourcing of it-related work to developing countries and my parents are from Pakistan, I can´t keep back on referring to the Pakistan Software Export Board. The organization is related to the government and is mandated to promote Pakistans IT-industry.

As seen on their site and according to my information is the it-business Pakistan doing well - It is not so matured and voluminous as in India, but Pakistan has still the benefits of a large number of of it-candidates (India have now lack of it-candidates, so that they outsource further to fx. China) and the salaries are much lower than in India (the living standard and the salaries have increased a lot on the later years in India). On the other hand is outsourcing not anymore a matter of only cost reductions, but must be seen broader from a strategic, innovative, value chain and business oriented point of view. I know several firms in Denmark, that are working with outsourcing to Pakistan off shore, on shore, near shore, right shore, smart sourcing, partnerships, DCT Development Center teams etc. :- )

And for the Open Source Geeks (There is a lot of them according to my webstats:- )) -The PSEB have established The Open Source Resource Center with the aim of shifting from proprietary software to Open Source Software. As u can read here are many of the governmental projects based on OS SW.

Can they phish u?

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 09:17:00 +0000

There is a lot of talk about the dangers and risks on the net. I found this informativ test and an eyeopner for how difficult it is to differentate between phished and real sites.

I answered correct on 9 of the 10 questions and I am there there for a Safety Guru. Try it; it is rather difficult.

Headlines from the annual IDC SOA Conference 07

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Thu, 10 May 2007 17:42:00 +0000

I participated in the IDC SOA Conference yesterday. There was not much new since the last conference in 06 (???), but there was a little more focus on that SOA must be business oriented. I have noted the following new headlines:

There are not SOA-budgets!” the presenter from IDC said. U will never get budget for SOA, but u can easily get budget for business initiatives like better customer relations, Business intelligence, process optimization etc. Another interesting point according to a survey was, that most executives don´t know anything about SOA, but SOA is often implemented bottom up in different projects and initiatives. I think this is a very good point (in the beginning of the SOA-journey), because many executives like our, are tired of big plans and setup and new concepts, promises and technologies.

Daniel A Powers from IBM have some very interesting points about what SOA and services are. He explained SOA as a collection of lessons learned from the past… He also gave a very simple and easily understandable definition of a service – A Service is a repeatable business task like Check Customer credit, open new account etc. This definition also supports, that business processes are chunks of business activities.

A director from Nordea presented their SOA-work. According to his world there is not any SOA, but there is EA and SOE (E=Enterprise). They call all their EA and SOA work for NTP for Nordea Transformation Programme and EA is the driving.

The Danish Commerce and Companies Agency presented their combination of SOA and Open Source. It was very interesting to hear that their main drivers for the focus on Open Source is primary to attain full access to all source code and documentation, which ensure better quality of systems, because the vendor knows that all their code will be published for the whole www and many geeks from the communities will comment it. Secondly is the driver to be more progressive and there for is saving of costs not the driver.

End of the national hearing of B103

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:57:00 +0000

The national hearing of B103, Parliamentary decision about mandatory open standards have ended now. U can read the answers here and there are answers from organizations, public institutions and the private sector. There is much discussion about the document-formats (ODF versus Open XML) and the FESD-standardization.

The next step is that B103 will be sent for hearing in the EU-countries, which can take more than 6 months.

Introduction to Office SharePoint Server 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:36:00 +0000

I participated in a Microsoft Architecture Forum-gathering yesterday, where there was a presentation of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 by a MS-evangilist.

The new SharePoint consist of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and MS SharePoint Server (MOSS). U can ses the modules in the following pic, where the seven modules (marked with green) representens the WSS. The WSS is payed by the licenses for Windows Server 2003, which is used by many organizations (u also need SQL Server 2000 or 2005).

The new version of SharePoint is HUGE. It can also be used for developing ASP.NET-solutions. This point is very interesting for many organizations, also for us. Moreover can it be used for portals, intranet, ekstranet, internet, personalized content, workflows, Business Intelligence, integrations etc. There for can it be a very big elephant to swallow for an organization. I have used it for project sites at KMD, where everybody made their own with no governance at all. It resulted in chaos with no chances for knowledge-sharing across the projects.

Many of our partners has recommended SharePoint for us for solution on different problems like management of documents etc., but we have not chosen it now.

The open source CMS Umbraco

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:49:00 +0000

I participated in a Microsoft Architecture Forum-gathering today, where there was a presentation of the open source CMS Umbraco by Kasper B. Andersen, who is one of the founders.

Umbraco is free, well documented and based on 100% .NET, but requires MS SQL Server. MS SQL Server Express Edition is free , but there are not many hosters, who supports the free edition. Umbraco don´t support mySQL yet.

The CMS have basic functionality for content handling and creation of templates with XML and XSLT. Moreover doesn´t Umbraco make any html by itself and keeps the html nice and clean – have anybody seen the html in MS SharePoint 2003 or MS FrontPage????. There should be not any limits in design and functions – U can add new functionality by XSL or by using own .NET controls (User Controls and Custom Controls) created in Visual Studio. It´s also possible to add new applications into the umbraco user interface, by using drag´n´drop controls in Visual Studio. The user/role model can also be extended to match your application and if you choose to use the central node structure in Umbraco, the application will be taking fluently with the Umbraco CMS with a few lines of code. Almost any part of the Umbraco user interface can be customized and new functionality added using the .NET language c#, VB.NET or Delphi by implementing tiny interfaces. There for should it theoretically be easy to integrate complex systems into one system (but not in the spirit of SOA…)

I think it is impressive that the four danes have created this CMS and the CMS is used for bilzonen.dk, Copenhagen Prisons and by 20.000 others (since 2002). There for is the CMS widely used commercially. We use a old version of Intrasuite and Synkron in our organization and I think the first one is very unflexible, have many limitations and not user friendly at all. We have sometimes talked about MS Sharepoint Server 07, but it is very expenssive (=one of the biggest investments by MS), requires large implementation efforts and is probaly overkilled for many organizations, maybe also for organizations like us.

On the question of how they earn their money, Kasper answered with donations and training, consulting and coaching and support if the problem can not be handled by the community.

Two new Webservice security standards

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 07:28:00 +0000

OASIS has announced approval of two new webservice security standards. The both standards are extensions of WS-Security.

WS-SecureConversation focuses on "long-running exchanges" by adding a security context authentication model in contrast to WS-Security's focus on single messages. There for is the standard essential for when two parties are communicating with multiple rounds of secured messages back and fourth.

In order to secure communication between two parties, both must exchange security credentials (=proof or attestation of trustiness). Before that can take place though, each party needs to determine if they can trust the asserted credentials of the other. The WS-Trust can obtain and exchange security credentials, because the standard enables companies to issue, renew and validate security tokens, either directly with one another or through a trusted third party.

IBM, Microsoft and Sun have verified successful implementations of WS-SecureConversation and WS-Trust.

Read more here.

The annual danish e-gov architecture conference

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 03:06:00 +0000

I am for the next two days participating in the annual danish e-gov architecture conference 07 (OIO Arkitekturkonference 07). I am seeing forward to meet my former colleagues and others in my network and to meet new people.

The conference is a must for everybody involved in e-goverment. You can watch the videos and blogs here.

B103 in our Agency

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:59:00 +0000

With background in the B103, Parliamentary decision about mandatory open standards are we on the behalf of our EA-programme working on flowing activities:

- Dialogue with our it-projects, primary focussing on requirement specifications and tenders. It is done as a part of our existing IT-Governance model
- Update of our existing standards catalogue. We have taken the standards from The national e-gov interoperability Framework, which we are focusing on strategically.
- Continuous observing of the latest developments in standards, especially Open XML and ODF.

Moreover should all the ministries (ministeromraader) ultimo 2007 prepare a action plan for implementing B103, where it gives value for the business. We will also be involved in this work.

Microsoft works on getting Open XML approved by ISO

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:53:00 +0000

Regarding the very hot topic about document-standards, especially ODF and Open XML it is interesting, that ISO has agreed to put Microsofts Open XML on a fast-track approval process that could see Open XML ratified as an international standard by August.

It is especially interesting regarding the B103 Danish parliamentary decision about open standards.

Read more here.

Working on an IT-strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 19:24:00 +0000

No doubt about that it is difficult to explain Architecture and especially Enterprise Architecture to the business. We have also faced this challenge though we have a serious communication plan with many communication activities. Until now we were convinced about that our EA-programme can substitute an IT-strategy. Now we are working on an IT-strategy, because it is more understandable and easier to sell to the business. An IT-strategy is like other sub strategies leveraged from the Business Strategy. Moreover it is more easy, simple and tangible to communicate a 10 pages IT-Strategy-document.

Here are some theoretical considerations. According to for example Peter Herzum is the purpose of EA to align Business Strategies with IT-strategies => IT-strategies can be a result of EA. On the other side is the result of a well designed IT-strategy an Enterprise Architecture, which supports the Business by the best means. Moreover is IT-Governance essential for connecting Business and IT and EA is one of the best practices for supporting IT-Governance. There for there is mutual correlations between EA and IT-Strategy.

In the context of Architecture and especially EA this video explains what enterprise architects do, what a plan is and why an organization needs architects.

Useful site about MS Biztalk

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 09:06:00 +0000

I was very pleased to find a community site about MS Biztalk. It contains a lot of Biztalk-resources, like whitepapers, documentation etc.

We use the Biztalk for sending e-procurements (elektronisk fakturaer) to public institutions and payments to citizens through EasyAccount (Nemkonto).

We are now working on collecting payments with Betalingsservice (BS) from PBS with use of Biztalk.

The context for above is a Line of Business, where we work with payments and procurements in different arrangements in like f.eks. subsidies to the fisheries and private city renovation.

Finish with Master of IT, Software development and master-thesis published!

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 19:18:00 +0000

I can now call myself for a Master of IT in Software development from IT-University of Copenhagen. I have defended my master-thesis and got an 8! I am very disappointed, because I have worked very hard and done a lot of work. Moreover are my average marks now reduced from 10 to 9,8. The arguments for the 8 were:

- I acted to much as a consultant in my project report and too uncritical regarding my employer Agency for Governmental Management. - My employer was one of the studied and analyzed cases.
- The above have consequences for the academic and the hermeneutismic focus. I had not much focus on being academically in a practical context with reference to ”The Reflective Practitioner” by Donald Schoen
- The project is simply too big and I should have done a better defining!

After all I am very happy for being finished with my master. It is very hard and time-consuming to take a M.IT part time while having a demanding full time job and a family.

Check out my thesis here and the appendix here.

Celebration of tenth jubilee for graduating from High School

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 20:46:00 +0000

I graduated from Taarnby Gymnasium/High School 10 years ago. It was celebrated with a nice gathering this weekend. It was very nice to meet the guys and girls from our class 13. Y, anno 1997. The most of us have become fathers and mothers. It was really nice to talk with the others as we all are much more matured now and then more comfortable to communicate with. We are all employed in different sectors. We have a Ph. D, a Ph. D-fellow and the others are working in different sectors from Finance to change management, teaching, literature, arts, insurance, shipping, law, public and administration. Only I and one another guy are IT-geeks.

After the gathering I reflected about the three years of High School-time regarding teaching. I think the purpose of High School is to gather basic knowledge, learn to learn and become more mature, but by God how many of our teachers were some fools and bad teachers. I personally didn´t learned what I should do. There was very little focus in group and project working and how can students become more mature without this? The education in for example math, physics and chemistry was very hard to understand and to theoretical. Especially the oral exams in for example in math were hard, because it was primary based on proving the proofs of math and not at all on practical use. After the High School I ended at the Engineering University of Copenhagen and here I really learned to learn and to use our theory practically. I am very great full for the years at the Uni and the project and group work matured me a lot. I resulted in that my grades at the Engineering University of Copenhagen and now at IT-University of Copenhagen is about 2 grades higher than the High School!

Some one invented the concept of learning the whole life. In the gathering I learned the difference between high and low tones in context of a PS2-game with karaoke etc. It was really new knowledge for me, though I should have learned it in the Music-subject in 1. Y…: - )

Open Source ESB - Mule at The Danish Commerce and Companies Agency (DCCA)

noreply@blogger.com (Asim Hanif - asimblogged.com) — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 07:26:00 +0000

I recently got a comment from James McGovern , who pointed out that instead of writing about commercial ESB-produkt like here, here and here I should point people towards Open Source projects like the ServiceMix ESB and the Liferay Portal and CMS.

Thank you for your comment James and in this context I will mention that DCCA uses an ESB-product based on Mule. They use the ESB-product for a self-service service: - ) for companies, where they can register their production places. The ESB is used for integration and service enabling of a case and document handling system based on Documentum. Drools is used as a rules engine.

So the above mentioned open source ESBs can deliver most of the functionality from the commcercial ESBs. But they still don´t have much success and maybe are the causes and challenges the same as other open source software?