If you were able to attend GITA 30, you would have likely heard the announcement "GE Energy to Introduce New Oracle-Based Product Portfolio for Electric Disturbition Utilities" (be sure to read the comments for this article). It is also likely that if you had any questions and concerns at that meeting that there would have been plenty of GE representatives there to answer your questions and assuage your concerns. It sounds to me that GE had a consistent message that they were able to get out to the attendees.
If you were not able to attend GITA 30 it is likely that you now have more questions than answers about this strategic announcement by GE. I was unable to attend GITA so I count myself in that group of under informed Smallworld users/partners. If this year's attendance was any indication, then I imagine that many others in the Smallworld community were also not able to make use of the direct interaction with GE representatives to have their questions/concerns heard. And GITA attendance is largely from the Western Hemisphere. European, Asian and African Smallworld community members would have had even less chance to get their questions answered.
I suspect that this year's Smallworld Users Conferences will be dominated by presentations on this new architecture (and hopefully demonstrations), but it seems like a long time to wait until September/October to have our questions answered.
Maybe GE would consider some of the following communication options:- press release
- send a more detailed note out to all Smallworld users/partners
- Smallworld Helpdesk has a fairly efficient mechanism in the SupportCentral site to send out blanket e-mails to all users. Use this feature to give a more-detailed-than-the-press-release announcement to the Smallworld community
- Online forum
- I understand that there might be concerns about making information available on an uncontrolled list, so extend the Global Customer Forums (see On-line Smallworld resources (closed and open)) to include a forum where customers/partners are invited to post any questions they have about the new product.
- Commit to having GE management/technical staff answer each post in a timely manner.
- FAQ
- As the questions start coming in to GE as phone calls and e-mails, compile a list of Frequently Asked Questions and post them in the forum.
- online demonstrations
- provide WebEx demonstrations of a more technical nature where we can see how the new tools are supposed to work.
Most importantly, please talk to us sooner than later. It would be helpful even to send out a note (another press release, maybe) that indicates dates and types of information will be made available. For example "GE will have a new customer forum opened by April 1", etc...
As always, I welcome readers' comments. In particular, I am interested in what kind of communication you would find helpful to address your questions or concerns about this new "non-GIS" spatial product announcement by GE.
I think I might hammer the open source / public license idea a bit more. Hopefully the more we do this the more likely that we might actually get a response from GE. I have tried to get some responses from GE about their official view of open source or public license as it pertains to Smallworld but my requests have vanished into the e-mail ether.
Here are some ideas that I would like to see GE address:
- open source any modules that will provide easier access for external systems to query/manipulate data in the VMDS database.
A recent comment to one of my articles suggested doing this for Smallworld's SQL Server product. This is a tool that allows Windows applications to see Smallworld VMDS data as ODBC data sources. I think this functionality would be a great candidate for open source by GE. I think taking that action could reenergize the Smallworld user base and show real commitment by GE to address customer concerns about lack of access to VMDS data.
The pertinent questions I think are: what would it hurt GE to open source SQL Server? What would it benefit GE to open source SQL Server? I cannot think of any real negative impacts to these actions. As the Anonymous commenter suggested, not many customers use the Smallworld SQL Server product anyways.
Opening/Freeing that product could spur innovation in open access to VMDS and may actually provide a positive benefit to customers in a short time frame.
- There is a great article at Ask The Wizard called Creating Competitors. "Ask the Wizard" is a blog run by FeedBurner CEO Dick Costolo.
GE's CEO Jeff Immelt stresses learning as a key to success in today's dynamic world. I would recommend the Creating Competitors article to the Smallworld managers as an article that at least gives them some ideas about how someone has built a successful software organization in today's dynamic world.
Here are some key points from that article: - Provide an open API
- even if you control your core code, providing an open API into your system will spur innovation.
- I think that Smallworld is already doing this with products such as Smallworld Automation and the new Service Oriented Architecture and Internet Application Server. But it would not hurt to review whether these are the types of APIs that will allow others to build on your product and not on your competitors product. I would also not hurt to make these open API mechanisms more widely known to current and potential Smallworld customers.
- Provide a free version of your software
- people will always want a free version of something. If you don't have one, they will get it from your competitor. Who do you think they will look to when they are ready for an upgrade?
- I do not know of a free version for Smallworld, but it might be worth pursuing something like that. I seem to remember a few years ago GE handed out demo CD's of Smallworld that actually installed Smallworld on your computer with an easy install wizard interface and then let you work on the Cambridge demo database.
- Maybe once GE officially moves to Oracle/Java architecture, they could make the VMDS/Magik architecture the free version. VMDS is very portable and could be easily licensed for free use. Compare this to trying to license Oracle for free use.
These are my thoughts. I acknowledge that I do not have the responsibility nor knowledge to run a large organization such as GE Energy's Smallworld group. I am sure that the people that do that are making the best decisions they can in each situation. What I am trying to initiate with this article is a public discussion about how to continue to make Smallworld thrive in a changing market place. Until GE enters this public discussion, I am afraid these posts may sound more like monologues than the multilateral conversations that I hope for.
As always I would love to hear reader comments to anything I post.
I found some interesting links on the GE Energy Geospatial Asset Management page.
- An official view from GE on the outlook of the GIS industry in 2007.
- Cambridge office holding an Open Day. I am curious about what an "Open Day" is. The flyer does not give too many details. Anyone in the UK or Ireland attending and willing to report on it afterwards?
- I'm always interested in hearing about large companies that see Smallworld as the best solution for them. Find out more by reading a GE Energy executive interview with Dr.-Ing. Andreas Bordonetti, Head of Power Distribution, Azienda Energetica S.p.A.
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