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Knowledge Management

01.21.2012, 1 Comment, English, by .

 

Knowledge Management (KM) is the group of methods and techniques that aim to create, collect, organize, share and analyze the common knowledge of a specific group or individual in order to make the existing activities and performance more effective.
To understand the KM better, it is better to analyze what the term “knowledge” actually means. Actually, knowledge stands on the next evolutionary phase of the information. With the help of the human experience, skills and a specific usage, the information becomes knowledge for both people and technology. This knowledge contains all the components of the information and the key factors of success during/after the usage of that information.
To understand it deeply, it is also better to look at the history of Knowledge Management.  Since human race started to share the necessary information, experience and skills with the younger generation in order to survive in the nature, the management of knowledge became dependently important.

Knowledge Management started to evolve in ancient times. In 3500 BC, people started to record their real life experiences with the necessary information and the skills in order to allow the younger generations and other people to learn and understand it. Even though it was not that effective for the share and the management of knowledge, it allowed people to create a common written language, syntax and concept that can allow every individual to write and share their knowledge with others.  Just after the stone writing age, the papyrus (2800 BC) is developed and offered a brilliant solution to transfer the knowledge easily.
From the time stones are used to share the knowledge to today’s world, the management of knowledge became a very important and critical factor both for individuals and organizations. After the computer and the networking technologies started to be part of the life, the role of KM is started to be more critical. Especially, ARPANET (1970’s) and World Wide Web (1989) framework were the critical steps of the sharing of knowledge, not just between private components of groups also between the regular and individual people from all around the world.
Of course, as the technological developments are started to be integrated to each other, databases become the ground factor of storing the data that constructs the structure of knowledge and the management of those databases are very important in order to secure and increase the level of performance of the data that needs to be transferred for a specific purpose.
As the companies started to use the technology in order to increase the business process level with the help of some standards of infrastructure and applications, the Knowledge Managements became even complicated and surprisingly abstract.
Even though there is not any universal definition for Knowledge Management that is being used in huge organizations, it can be analyzed and identified by two perspectives; Management of People and Management of Information.

Analysis of Knowledge Management

Management of Information is the technological side of the KM. According to the Management of People, it is a newer perspective because of the date of the usage of complex technologies.  The aim of this management field is to provide the methods and techniques appropriate MIS, AI and reengineering in order to manage the knowledge. Because it is the technical side of the KM, the knowledge is not mostly related with the process itself; it is about the objects that are already achieved or will be achieved in the future.
Management of People is actually about organizing the requirements and needs of the company with meeting them right employee at the right time, in order to get the optimum level of effectiveness from the process. The perspective is the people side of the KM. As the processes of the business requirements grow, with the used information, employee skills and experience the level of knowledge also increases. According to the Management of People perspective, process is equal to knowledge.

A specific acticity respresents the goals and processes

Even though these two perspectives mainly allow understanding the characteristics of KM, it does not give a complete definition.  In order to analyze the KM better, the KM should be interpreted within the organization level and individual level.

Benefits
In today’s organizations, KM has two important features to improve the value of assets of the company. Those assets can be categorized as knowledge-based assets and intellectual assets.  Within the usage of Knowledge Management, the company can have some of those advantages;
•    Innovation with the help of flow of ideas: The knowledge management programs can allow employees and departments to see the overall status of the company about a specific development field. With the help of this ability, new ideas and innovative techniques can be emerged with respect to the existing knowledge.
•     Improving the customer satisfaction by reducing the response time: With the help of the Knowledge Management usage, the employees of the company will be able to find the opportunity of appropriate solutions to customers with an acceptable response time because KM will allow them to find the necessary information about the demand of the customer more relatively and rapidly.
•    Increasing the revenues: With the help of the KM, the necessary product and service that the company provides will be located in the market, with the help of the rapid inter-departmental communication to use the right information at the right time.
•    Keeping employee dynamic: The employees are important to be kept “alive” during critical transactions. With the help of Knowledge Management, the information system that contains the functions of KM can record the value of every employee and allows managers to reward them if they have critical additions to the business process transactions of the company.
•    Process reduction: With the help of KM, the costs and amount operations can be reduced by eliminating the redundancy of process phases and unnecessary ones.
•    Sustained competitive advantage: KM can allow companies to increase the importance of intellectual properties and knowledge-based assets that can be costly to imitate n the market that the company locates in. This can help the company to have a competitive advantage in a long-term period.
Knowledge management can improve the total efficiency, productivity and revenues in any business transaction if it can be used well.

Challenges
Even though there may be some fundamental benefits of KM usage in organizations, there are also some challenges that can force managers of the company to identify those as serious problems.
•    Employee diversification: Especially in large and international companies, there are so many employees from all over the world with different cultural backgrounds. In this situation, every employee has her/his own way of thinking, producing and sharing the required knowledge. The managers of the company should be careful about adopting the KM applications; they should inform and train their employees about the pre-defined common inputs so that all the employees can add value to a specific business process with a common language or method.
•    Maintenance: Managing knowledge does not have specific duration periods. As the company stays active in the industry, the creation, organization and distribution of knowledge will always be a serious challenge for the employees.  Because knowledge is an easy asset to be stolen, the Knowledge Management application that’s being used should always be maintained and kept up-to-date in order to protect the values of the company.
•    Trash data: Even though the collection of data is important for the management of knowledge, not all the data is necessary or useful for the company. To eliminate the required and critical data, the KM application and the usage of it should be well defined and structured in order to organize the incoming data from external environment.
•    Data interpretation: The transfer of data from one point to another (i.e. inter-departmental or inter-organizational transfer) should be well defined in order to keep the value of transferred data meaningful. One group of data may not be important as it is for another specific group. For example, the necessary data for the Sales department may not be important for the Production department. The organization of those transfer paths and methods can be a huge problem for companies that have complex organizational structure.

As the Knowledge Management become more and more important for organizations, the professions about KM fields became also important. Even though it may not seem a critical job for Small and Medium Enterprise’s(SME), it has an efficient role for larger enterprises as the information and the knowledge becomes more complex and hard to manage, in order to provide appropriate information and guide for a specific activity.
There is even a non-profit organization that is created for only Knowledge Management related professional employees, called Knowledge Management Professional Society (KMPro). The society accepts professionals from all around the world and has some specific benefits for those people who are willing to improve themselves in order to gain professional knowledge from others. For instance, the members of KMPro can find educational and training opportunities, participate into related discussions with the help of discussion forums, Instant Messaging environments, blogs and get instant information and recommendations from Knowledge Management databases. In addition to those features, members can find the related job postings to improve their careers in this area.  They have also have an examination program that allows members to become a Certified Knowledge Manager (CKM) with completing related workshops.

In order to understand how Knowledge Management used in organizations, we can also analyze specific professions that are related to the sub-topics of Knowledge Management. As a major and one of the most prestigious professions, Chief Knowledge Officers (CKO) can be a good example. In today’s enterprises, those people are highly needed in order to avoid some critical problems that have the negative potential to influence the total performance of that organization, especially if that organization locates in highly competitive environment.

Chief Knowledge Officers can help organizations to solve:
•    Inability to Learn
•    Failure of using the hidden knowledge
•    Lack of money making with the help of KM
In general, CKO’s have inter-disciplinary academic and professional background and that allows them to understand the flow of knowledge between different and un-related departments of a specific organization.
Another interesting profession is Knowledge Brokering. Generally, Knowledge Brokers have important role about matching the appropriate knowledge to the right employee in the organization so that the performance can be increased optimally. Especially, their communication with researchers who work academic institutes and research-based organizations has the highest role because they are able to provide the dynamic knowledge within the specific field. They can also support the development of organizational skills of employees with the help of seminars and specific trainings.

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Organizational Collaboration

01.03.2012, No Comments, English, by .

Collaboration between companies and inside of the company is important, because organizations need to make a strong relationship to survive in the competitive market. Actually, it is somehow a way to communicate with another company to gain some tangible and intangible benefits.
For instance, Apple decided to make a revalutional change in the beginning of 2006. They collaborated with the biggest chip maker company in the world, Intel Corp. With this way, Apple started to gain new customers and increased it’s market share. Today, Apple is the biggest technology company and they couldn’t be successful if they wouldn’t have create strong relationships.

Advantages of Collaboration
Gain Access to a different resources :
A company can use different resources which are located at another company. With this way, the company doesn’t have to create it’s own resources by themselves.
                  -Flexibility also allows companies to introduce better and effective products with using those kind of different resources.
Advantageous Entrance:
If a company collaborates with another company which are related within the same market, it means the company starts from the point of it’s partner.    
Neutralizing Competitors:
Collaborations may also allow partners to manipulate each other to protect their strength in the market, with blocking them to collaborate with other similar companies.

Example : Cisco
Today, Cisco has lots of partners in related markets. Because, Cisco’s main vision is to provide less-boundary business solutions with the help of effective collaboration techniques. Specifically, Cisco has a strong collaboration with IBM. They created a new perspective of Video Conferencing, which is called Telepresence. The new technology’s main difference is to allow experiencing almost a real-life meeting from different locations.

Disadvantages of Collaboration
Management Complexities:
In organizational collaborations, partner companies will start to create some common projects. With this improvement, they will need to integrate their existing approaches. This will cause some managerial complexities.
Organizational  Risks:
 Until today, almost 70% of collaborations fail because of highly organizational risks. At the beginning of the collaboration period, companies don’t analyze themselves professionally and can’t create strong communication between each other.

Example: Volvo – Renault
At some points, Volvo and Renault’s collaboration may seem a successful partnership because they were in the same market so that they have some advantages, just like advantageous entrance to the automotive industry. However, Volvo was a Swedish company, while Renault was French. There were some cultural differences. Those differences affected managers negatively during the collaboration period. Also there were some organizational risks. Because they didn’t totally mentioned those risks, the collaboration failed.

Methods and mediums of organizational collaboration
During the presentation, we tried to talk about the aspects of organizational collaboration. To keep those collaborations strong, we need to give a lot of importance to the communication.
There are some methods and mediums that we can use during the process of collaboration.

-        The first and important step of communication between companies is built within collaboration agreements. Those agreements are being made with related contracts. A contract allows both sides to define the boundaries of the collaboration. Because those contracts directly define the overall process of the collaboration, we need to use them as an effective medium. If we can’t use it effectively, the boundaries of partnership will not be sufficient and it will probably fail.

-        Information Systems is also very important for the communication. With the help of IS, we can use  some useful methods to communicate with the partner company.

o     Video conferencing:

is one of the most effective mediums in today’s world. There are some improvements about this method, just like the telepresance technique that we mentioned. It also uses the highly technological features. Users feel very comfortable about that.

o    Web technologies:

With the improvement of Web 2.0, some tech companies, such as Google, provide some group services for companies. Google Wave is one of those services. It allows us to communicate dynamically with sharing instant files, presentations, and organizational information.

The service is based on e-mail groups. The user will just need to have a simple email account to use those kinds of facilities. Using email groups as medium is an important communication method.

-        Also, companies need to meet and evaluate the conditions of the collaboration periodically. During those meetings, both sides need to understand each other very successfully. Using face to face meetings is one of the most important methods of communication in organizational collaboration.New technologies and improvements continue to affect the communication methods and mediums. Companies need to integrate themselves dynamically to develop strong relationships and communicate effectively.

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The usage of Cloud Computing for Enterprise Systems

11.24.2011, 3 Comments, English, by .

To understand usage of Cloud Computing (CC) to provide efficient online service of ERP Systems and components, we firstly need to understand the basic logic of the cloud systems and the aspects of enterprise systems architecture that are being used until today. Actually, the systems that are being applied to companies to increase the level of required business processes and information flow between both departments and organizations are quite effective. As the technological development goes on, some new methods and techniques are being developed by ERP vendors to provide efficient solutions for their customers. However, there are some basic requirements like IT equipment and support, in order to implement company-wide on-premise information systems and use it effectively in necessary transactions. Those requirements cause a serious increase of the cost and the maintenance of especially infrastructure requirements increases the cost, as the system continues to remain activated.

With the help of the previous industry-specific experiences, most of the companies now know that it is not enough to implement an ERP system to the organizational business process structure of their company because maintaining and keeping the system components (both logical and functional) alive during the optimum lifetime is also important. Because the budget of the ERP implementation project is extremely increasing, ERP vendors started to provide some alternative solutions. With the help of the effective development of Web technologies, some companies decided to improve the efficiency of Cloud Computing to also increase the efficiency of enterprise systems and components that they provide to their customers.

The term Cloud Computing can be identified as accessing to some specific IT services through the Web, without any requirement of IT equipment and maintenance expenditure expect a simple Web browser that has regular features.  Those kinds of IT solutions can also be called as on-demand systems.

There are three basic models that can be explained to understand the service method of Cloud Computing. Those are:

-          PaaS(Platform as a Service):  It is about providing the systems of required operating system features to the customers in order to allow them to use those systems through the Internet and without any installation or download.(i.e. Google App Engine)

-          IaaS(Infrastructure as a Service): The service is about providing the required hardware equipments in order to support the operations. All the equipment and the maintenance of those equipment is owned by the vendor. (i.e. Rackspace)

-          SaaS(Software as a Service): From the aspect of using ERP systems, it is the most effective model of Cloud Computing.  The required software applications are hosted by the vendor and the customer can access to the software anytime he/she wants from a simple Web browser. All the maintenance, update and security standards are provided by the vendor. (i.e. Salesforce.com)

Generally, companies started to prefer using Cloud ERP Systems because of some specific benefits.  One of the most important benefits of Cloud Computing is that an on-demand system is less costly than on-precise system. It is very practical especially for a small-scaled or mid-size company to have an ability to let another company to handle with the technical problems and issues of the enterprise system that they will use. Because the cost of IT equipment will be reduced, the company will be able to orient the investment to other parts of the project. In addition to this, payment of an on-demand system is based on subscription of clients. Because there will not be unnecessary system performance, the clients of the company will only have to pay for the required performance for that period. The estimation of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) will be more acceptable for the top level managers of the company. (Costs of downtime, operation, administration, hardware and software)

Instead of on-premise systems, the employees and all other required stakeholders will be able to access to the system from anywhere, with the help of a mobile device or laptop that is able to run regular browser applications and have Internet connection. This will gain the company a huge flexibility of mobility.

There won’t be any kind of a necessity to install complicated software application to the end-user’s computer and this will also reduce the requirement of end-user computer replacement in long term.  Also because all the maintenance of hardware and –especially- software will be performed by the vendor, there will not be any kind of concern about that.

Even though there are many benefits of using cloud computing for ERP Systems, there are also some challenges of this subject. The data security will be a big dilemma in this phase. In such competitive industries, the intellectual property gains an important value. Even though there will be agreements and legal documents between the vendor and the customer, it is highly based on mutual trust. The company may have to upload some important data in order to get relevant results from the cloud system and those data will be directly available for the vendor as well.

Also, there may be a need of integration between the cloud ERP system and another component of the company located in legacy on-premise system. The Cloud Computing vendor should be well examined in order to understand the level of the component integration that is provided by the cloud system.

Because the company is basically renting the system from the vendor, there may be problems about the ownership standards, during the migration of the data if a new system is necessary to be implemented in the future. Within on-premise systems, the company buys the license of the enterprise system so that is not a problem if the company prefers not to use Cloud Computing.

 

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Supply Chain Management within ERP Systems

10.23.2011, No Comments, English, by .

To understand the basic rules of Supply Chain Management (SCM) , we firstly need to understand what is a supply chain. Actually, we can think about  supply chain with visualizing a group of organizations that are aimed to produce a final product to sell it to the end-user and increase the profits with the help of the successful communication between each other.

A supply chain starts from a supplier and end with the end-user, in other words the customer.  Within those points, it is required to have the manufacturer of the product and distributor of that product to deliver it to the customer. So, a fundamental supply chain consists of at least a supplier, a manufacturer, a distributor and a specific customer group that can consume the finished product and satisfy from using the product or service.

Of course, the management of the relationship within the whole supply chain became an important figure for the managers to increase the business process between collaborators and the profits. The aim of using SCM methods is to get the right materials from the right place at the right time within an acceptable cost and quantity. The a company can provide those conditions within a supply chain, it can be interpreted as an effective supply chain for that company to increase the profits.

As the SCM becomes important within and between the companies, SCM software applications started to be used in organizations. Some organizations have been using SCM system as a major application and some of them decides to use it as a component of a major ERP system that is integrated already. It depends on the type of the business process of a specific company to select on of these options, however, SCM also requires the data that especially comes from the customer.

Because of that, SCM systems are designed to take the data from legacy systems and use this data to evaluate decisions and make the customer demand forecast.  Because most of the big companies has an integrated ERP system on those days, the SCM is directly related to the ERP and CRM to get the information of customers of the company. So, CRM is the major component as a collaborator with SCM. It is important because all the supply of the components of the product or service is directly depends of the customer demand. To estimate the demand correctly, SCM uses the customer information and forecasts the demand with the help of it.  If the communication between CRM and SCM is not efficient, the forecasting can be a huge problem for the company. If the ERP system that is integrated to the company covers all the components like CRM, SCM and other requires functions, the communication between all the other components of ERP and SCM will be very efficient; not only with CRM, also with Finance Resource Management (FRM), Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP), Human Resource Management (HRM) and others.

There are five basic stages that explains how SCM works.

  • The planning stage is to identify the most appropriate strategy for the product that is demanded by the customer. This is the most important part, if the planning phase does not cover all the details of the strategic movements of the product or service, producing that product can increase the costs.
  • The development phase of the SCM is to find the appropriate suppliers and allow them to provide the required supplement fo r a product.
  • The other phase is making the product. It actually covers the main production process to create an efficient product for the customer.
  • The delivering  phase is all about the logistics movements of the product. The product is delivered to the necessary location so that the customer can achieve to the product and buy it.
  • The return phase is also important. There may be some problems about the product and customer may not be satisfied about that; to handle and solve those problems, return of defective product and providing a new one is necessary.

Key Features of SCM

Inventory Management:  For companies that has SCM application can manage the inventory transactions so that they can see the status of required raw materials and spare parts of product. With this way, they can activate the necessary orders in order to provide full supplement during the manufacturing process. The Inventory management directly allows companies to reduce inventory costs.

Order Management: Companies that has SCM software also can manage and monitor the status of the orders that are being delivered from the suppliers so that they can directly get real-time information about where the order is and when it will be arrived.

Procurement: SCM software also allows companies to automate the sourcing and purchasing processes in order to meet the demand of the customer.

Logistics: With the information that is managed and monitored from the SCM software, companies can increase the customer satisfaction with showing the real-time status of the product and where those products can be found and bought.

Forecasting and Planning: The forecasting is very important for companies that are aimed to increase the efficiency of the business processes between its’ collaborators with using a specific SCM software. After estimating the total customer demand, the managers can get into the planning stage to provide the enough quantity of product to satisfy the customer.

 

 

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Microsoft’tan Adobe’a Flash darbesi

09.16.2011, 4 Comments, Türkçe, by .

Microsoft’un, Windows 8′in geliştiriciler için test edilebilir bir versiyonunu duyurmasının ardından işletim sisteminin sahip olacağı detaylı özellikler hakkında da çeşitli gelişmeler yaşanmaya devam ediyor. Bir süre öncesinde Apple’ın, kendi mobil cihazları iPhone, iPod ve iPad’ler için geliştirdiği işletim sistemi olan iOS üzerinde Adobe Flash desteğinin olmayacağını duyurmasının ardından Adobe’dan bu konu hakkında sitemkar bir açıklama gelmişti.Apple’da, uzun bir süredir başarılı bir ortaklık içerisinde olduğu Adobe’a ürünlerinin, kendi cihazlarının performansını negatif yönde etkilediğini belirterek HTML5 üzerinde yoğunlaşma kararı almıştı. Apple mobil cihazların yaygınlaşması ve piyasada pek çok alternatif sistemin de HTML5 üzerine yoğunlaşmasının ardından Web üzerinde Flash uygulamaları altyapısı ile servis veren pek çok şirkette radikal değişiklikler yaparak geleceğe yatırım çerçevesinde HTML5 altyapısı ile hizmetlerini geliştirme kararı aldı. Bu kararın ardında kuşkusuz HTML5′in, özellikle mobil cihazlarla olan yüksek potansiyelli uyumu da var. Microsoft’ta, aldığı bir karar ile Windows 8 üzerinde konuşlanacak olan Internet Explorer 10 için çeşitli kararlar alma aşamasına gelmiş durumda.

Microsoft’un bu noktada Windows 8 için iki tip IE 10 uygulaması geliştirmeye devam edecek olması ile birlikte bu uygulamalardan biri Flash desteğine sahip olmayacak. Metro stili ile kullanıma sunulacak olan IE 10 versiyonu HTML5 desteği üzerine yoğunlaşacak ancak Windows 7′dekine benzer bir masaüstü versiyonu olan diğer uygulamada bu destek sürdürülecek. Bu durum özellikle Microsoft’un ileride çıkarma planları yaptığı tablet ve diğer mobil cihazların çeşitliliğinin artması için geliştirdiği bir strateji olarak yorumlanıyor.

Internet Explorer uygulamasını geliştiren ekibin başında yer alan Dean Hachamovitch, MSDN Bloğu‘nda yer alan yazısında konu hakkında şöyle bir açıklama yapmış;

Metro stili ile kullanımda olan Internet Explorer’ın bu versiyonu cihazın pil ömrünü geliştirdiği kadar aynı zamanda müşterilerin güvenlik, güvenilirlik ve gizliliğini de korumaya yardımcı oluyor. Eklentiler Web tarihi boyunca şu ana kadar büyük rol oynadılar, ancak Web, HTML5 ile birlikte büyük yol katetti. Bu eklentilerin Metro stilindeki görsel arayüze uyumunu sağlamak kullanıcılar için bir gelişme değil eksilme olacaktır.

Adobe’dan ise bu konuda bir açıklama yapılmış değil. Her ne kadar Adobe’un Flash’dan ziyade geliştirdiği ve piyasaya sürdüğü pek çok hizmet ve ürünü olsa da, özellikle dinamik mobil kullanım piyasasında Andorid işletim sisteminin desteğini almasından sonra iddialı bir konuma gelmişti. Bu noktada Flash’a güçlü bir alternatif ve Microsoft’un kendi ürünü olan Silverlight da rakibi ile aynı kaderi paylaşacak gibi görünüyor.

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Windows 8′den yenilikler

09.12.2011, No Comments, Türkçe, by .

Microsoft’tan Windows 8 ile ilgili haber ve yenilikler belirmeye başladı. Merakla beklenen yeni işletim sisteminin sahip olduğu arayüz, özellikle Windows Phone 7′nin arayüzü ile büyük bir uyum göstermekte. Bu uyum sayesinde Microsoft’un ilerki aşamalarda duyurması muhtemel olan tabletler için de gerekli arayüz desteği sağlanmış olacak.

 

Bunun yanında, dikkati çeken diğer bir yenilik ise Windows 8′in sahip olacağı Explorer’ın Microsoft’un bulut servislerine direkt olarak erişime sahip olacağı gerçeği. Bu erişim muhtemelen SkyDrive ve Windows Live Mesh üzerinden olacak. Bilindiği gibi, SkyDrive aslen kullanıcılara dosyalarını aktarabileceği bir ortam sunarken Mesh, sahip olunan verileri direkt olarak diğer Windows bilgisayarlar ile senkronize etmeye yarayan bir uygulama. Bu iki uygulama da şimdiden Windows 7 ve Vista kullanıcılarına Windows Live Essentials 2011 üzerinden kullanıma açılmış durumda. Sağlanacak bulut altyapısı ile birlikte kullanıcılar aynı zamanda Windows’a Live hesapları ile giriş yapabilecek duruma gelecek. Bu sayede Live hesabı olanlar internet bağantısı olan ve Windows 8 kurulu herhangi bir bilgisayardan istedikleri kişisel bilgileri kullanabilecek ve hesapları üzerinden işlem yapabilecekler.

İşletim sisteminin küçük ama kullanışlı bir diğer yeniliği ise sistemde yerleşik olarak bir PDF-okuyucu uygulamanın yer alacak olması. Modern Reader olarak adlandırılması olası olan bu uygulama sayesinde kullanıcılar ardık Adobe veya onun rakipi olan Foxit Reader’ı indirmek zorunda kalmayacak. ISO uzantılı dosyalar da bundan sonra yerleşik olarak üçüncü parti bir uygulamaya ihtiyaç kalmadan açılabilecek. Kullanıcıların sistemlerini kişiselleştirebilmeleri için görsel yenilikler de Windows 8 ile birlikte hizmete girecek. Aero Auto-Colorization (Otomatik Renklendirme) sayesinde o sırada kullanılan masaüstü arkaplan resmini baz alarak sistem renkleri otomatik olarak değişecek ve kullanıcıların belirlediği renk aralığı kapsamında dinamik bir görünüme sahip olacak.

Çeşitli yeniliklerin yanında bazı dedikoduların gerçekleşme ihtimali de merak konusu olmuş durumda. Bu dedikodulardan bazıları sistemin, üçüncü parti uygulamaların ortak bir tabanda bulunabileceği bir App Store’a sahip olacak olması ve uygulamaların kullanıcıyı bekletmeyecek kadar hızlı bir şekilde yüklenecek olması. Diğer çeşitli dedikodular ve kaynakları için NETWORKWORLD‘ün konu hakkındaki sayfası ziyaret edilebilir.

Çok az miktarda da olsa Windows 8′in kullanıcı arayüzü görüntüleri de Microsoft’un beta arşivinde yer almış durumda.

 

İşletim sisteminin diğer ekran görüntülerini görmek için aşağıdaki bağlantıyı kullanabilirsiniz;

http://www.betaarchive.com/screenshots/index.php?load=Windows%208%20Build%207850/

 

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Microsoft uygulamaları Symbian telefonlarda!

09.10.2011, No Comments, Türkçe, by .

İki gün önce Nokia’nın resmi blogunda çıkan habere göre yıl sonuna kadar bazı ücretsiz Microsoft uygulamaları Symbian işletim sistemi kullanan telefonların bir kısmında kullanıma sunulacak. İki şirketin ortaklaşa bir şekilde entegre etme çalışmalarına katılacağı uygulamaları ve bu uygulamaların güncellemelerini, şu sıralar Symbian OS’in son sürümü olan Symbian Belle kullanıcıları edinebilecek. Bunun yanında Symbian Anna kullanıcıları da sistemlerini Belle’e yükselterek bu hizmetten yararlanabilecek.

 

Microsoft’un Symbian için kullanıma sokmayı planladığı bazı mobil uygulamalar şunlar;

  • Microsoft OneNote, mobil not alma uygulaması olarak nitelendirilebilecek bu uygulama aynı zamanda online storage servisi veren SkyDrive ile de senkronize olma özelliğine sahip olacak.
  • Microsoft Document Connection, bu özellik sayesinde Symbian Belle kullanıcıları mobil cihazlarda ve SharePoint 2010 sitelerinde bulunan dökümanları, e-posta eklerini görüntüleyebilecek.
  • Microsoft Lync 2010 Mobile, anlık mesajlaşma ve Web-tabanlı görüşmeleri kullanıcıların hizmetine sunacak.
  • Microsoft PowerPoint Broadcast, PC’lerde yer alan PowerPoint sunumlarını mobil cihazlarda görüntülemeye yarayacak.
Nokia and Microsoft plan a "third ecosystem," an alliance that touches all parts of the mobile phone business.

Resim http://news.cnet.com/ adresinden alınmıştır.

Güncellemelerin ikinci kısmı da 2012 yılının başlarında gelecek ve Microsoft OneNote uygulamasına SharePoint senkronizasyonu eklenecek. Bunun yanında Microsoft Word, Excel ve PowerPoint uygulamaları da kullanıma uygun olarak eklenecek.
Nokia’nın Microsoft ile olan bu yakınlaşması sonrasında şirketin gelecekte Symbian işletim sistemi hakkında nasıl bir strateji belirleyeceği de tartışma konusu. Nokia, Haziran ayında Symbian’ın geliştirme ve destek hizmetini 2016 yılına kadar Accenture adlı danışmanlık firmasına devretmiş ve bu sayede 2,800 çalışanının şirket değiştirmesine sebebiyet vermişti. Bu anlaşma tam olarak Nisan ayında insanlarla paylaşıldı ve bundan birkaç ay sonrasında Nokia ile Microsoft yeni ortaklık açıklandı. Her ne kadar bu ortaklık büyük ses getirecek olsa da Nokia CEO’su Stephen Elop, Symbian destek ve geliştirmesinin 2016 yılına kadar devam edeceğini ve bu süreç boyunca Microsoft ile ortaklığın daha da detaylandırılacağını belirtti.

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Brand Finance firmasına ait marka değerlendirmesi sonuçları

09.09.2011, No Comments, Türkçe, by .

Londra merkezli Brand Finance firmasının bu ay içinde yaptığı değerlendirmeye göre Google, Apple ve Microsoft dünyanın en değerli olarak nitelendirilen – sırayla- üç markası durumunda.  Bu değerlendirme yapılırken Brand Finance çeşitli spesifik kriterleri baz almış. Bu kriterlerden en önemlileri şirketlerin son altı ay içinde geçirdikleri büyük finansal ve yönetimsel değişim süreçler. Bunun yanında benzer sektörlerde boy gösteren rakiplerinin çıkardığı ürünlere karşı istatistiksel risk oranları ve gelecekteki potansiyel inovasyon olanakları da değerlendirilen kriterler arasında yer alıyor.

 


Google önceden sahip olduğu konumunu bu listede de en değerli marka olarak 48.2 Milyar $ değeri ile muhafaza ederken, Apple firması yüzde 33 büyüyerek ilk defa da olsa Microsoft’u geçmiş ve Google’ın ardından ikinci sıraya yerleşmiş durumda.  Brand Finance firması Apple’ın bu agresif yükselişini şu şekilde değerlendiriyor;
Apple’ın başarısı ürünlerinin sahip olduğu yenilikçi tasarım, sadık yüketici tabanı ve altyapısı sağlam pazarlama aktiviteleri ile açıklanabilir. Her ne kadar Steve Jobs’un rahatsızlığı sebebiyle istifa etme kararı vermesinden sonra firmanın gelecekte düşüşe geçeceği spekülasyonları etrafta dolaşsa da Apple, sahip olduğu yenilikçi kültür yapısı sayesinde güçlü duruşunu korumakta kararlı.
Bunun yanında teknoloji ile direkt etkileşime sahip olmayan büyük firmaların sıralamalarında da değişiklikler söz konusu. Özellikle ABD merkezli bankaların total marka değeri, HSBC’nin Bank of America ve Wells Fargo gibi bu alanda öncü sayılan Amerikan şirketlerini geride bırakması düşüşe geçmiş durumda. Buna rağmen Coca-Cola, McDonald’s ve Nike gibi şirketler listeye göre güncel olarak küresel güçlerini korumakta. Çin ve Hindistan gibi büyüyen pazarlarda yer alan firmalar da kayda değer bir şekilde güç kazanırken, özellikle İspanyol firmaların yüzde 13, Fransızların ise yüzde 5 değer kaybetmesi ile Avrupa markaları bir düşüş içinde.

 

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The definition of small-worlds in a specific Network Model

09.08.2011, No Comments, English, by .

There are some network models and conceptions that people have been trying to understand and use for specific purposes in their scientific and business strategies. These network models basically allow users to understand what kind of a relationship that all the attributes located in a set of interval have between each other and other worlds. There are also some conditions that affect the information process logic of those models. To understand the circumstances better, we firstly need to understand the main logic of some specific models.

The term small-world is a very important factor of this field. To understand what it is, we can imagine a network that has some nodes and relations (ties) that allows those attributes to interact to each other. If there are more than two vertexes (nodes) within a specific constraint and all those vertexes somehow relate to each other, it means that there is a small-world, which also has individual rules of relations.  Those rules can be the rate of weak and strong ties between nodes, the level of embeddedness and the type of information flow within a micro environment. With respect to different small-worlds located on different self-environments, those kind of rules can also be acceptable for macro-environmental relations, which also means between small-worlds.

After some sort of small-worlds connected to each other, a new approach to the relationship within the network can be an important figure to define the conditions of all the network models. Because the environment becomes larger, also the information flow gets wider. During the flow of information between different small-worlds, some key nodes start to have an important role also for others, independently from the redundancy of local nodes. Those nodes actually defines the main standards of social capital, in other words, because they’ve got all the important information flow from other small-worlds without any extra performance, they determine the rules of that flow of information for it’s small-world’s local nodes.  No matter how much redundant ties the local node has, it is directly dependent to the critical one, the one that has all the control with other small-worlds. As we can also predict, those critical nodes are called ‘brokers’ in the network.

Image taken from www.neuro.gatech.edu

The main subject of our topic is directly related to those information. We can also make some inferences from that information to get some conditions that affects the needs of network models and conceptions. The equilibrium and disequilibrium of social order can be also advantageous to understand the dynamics of controlling or changing the information flow between nodes of a specific network. Theoretically, those terms explain the balance of the information flow within a network. During the disequilibrium, there will always be some nodes which has the highest value about a specific subject, while the others only have small portions of information. During this situation, there is a highly competitive challenge in the environment to get the critical parts of the information. New nodes can join to the network to increase their change of useful knowledge and this influences the fundamental structure of the network. In other words, the logical movements of brokers can affect the information distribution of network within a short-run and long-run period.  Until the network dynamics starts to follow a new equilibrium, it’s very hard to predict that the network stays constant. It’s also better to analyze the case with an example from the real life of micro and macro-environmental business fields.

An industrial example to small-worlds with the network of chandelier market

Let’s think about the chandelier market in İstanbul. There some local areas where most of chandelier seller’s get together and construct their own micro-environmental market, in other words, network. For example, people can go to Şişhane district and compare the costs the chandeliers and other lighting objects, that can be useful for their homes and other places where they go daily, from local stores. We can interpret this situation as a specific small-world (stores in Şişhane district) of chandelier market. Assume that there is an equilibrium in the network, it means most of the chandelier stores have similar label costs for their products, excluding outliers with an acceptable value of standard deviation. During this level of equilibrium, the conditions of the local market is almost constant. Even though there is a new potential competitor that is about to be established in the district, it will not affect the basic conditions of others because of the protective structure with respect to the equilibrium. The owner of the new competitor store will now the maximum and minimum income for a specific interval of time with analyzing others. Even though it seems quite confidential for a new competitor to know how much money he/she will gain, the probability of gaining more money from the others in that district is very low.  However, because it is a widely market in İstanbul, there will be some external factors which will affect the market of Şişhane.

Before going on about the external factors that are affecting a local market, let’s think about another small-world of chandelier market, which is located on Bağdat Avenue. The stores on this avenue will probably have more attractive products than others on Şişhane, because of the income level of people who are spending time on this district periodically. Thus, the label cost of the lightning products will be more expensive than Şişhane. It also means that the conditions of this small-world is different than the other, with respect to it’s own structure. Again, the small-world will not change with the help of the local equilibrium even though there are some new competitors upcoming.

Now, we know that there are two small-worlds of chandelier market in İstanbul that has some different conditions. Even though their potential levels of sales are different, they have a common supplier that is mandatory to sell their own products, which refers to, for instance, the raw material supplier.  No matter how attractive or different their products are, they will get their supply materials from another market, which refers to another small-world itself. From my personal experience, I know that most of the chandelier stores get their raw materials, which can be bulbs, sockets, pattern prototypes, and svarowski stones, from companies which are located in China.  Let’s assume that there is a duopolistic competition between raw material supplier companies in China which sends their products to İstanbul. Because most of the stores in İstanbul gets their materials from those two companies, they are the brokers in the network.

Now, let’s go back to the external factors which affect the small-world, Şişhane district. Suppliers from China can directly affect the cost of the lightning products with increasing or decreasing their label costs of raw materials. They can manipulate the equilibrium of the local market and cause to some fatal failures for the sellers in Şişhane. Because all the market is dependent to the companies in China, there is a dynamic structure which can sometimes be unpredictable and risky. Thus, disequilibrium of market causes to some differentiations in the market, with affecting existing companies to fail or new companies to get bigger.

We can also understand from here that there may be some critical nodes/organizations that can manipulate other small-worlds with changing their own conditions because they know that they have the main material to decide other’s circumstances. According all these conditions, the network’s needs can be revised and companies can define a strategy to protect their existence.

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Differences and similarities between Dijkstra and Bellman-Ford algorithms

09.08.2011, 3 Comments, English, by .

Both Dijkstra and Bellman-Ford algorithms are prepared to find the shortest path in a network.  The value of “shortest path” can vary according to the needs of the network. There may be a length or cost problem that is needed to be solved. From the perspective of finding the result, these two algorithms satisfy the same expe

Image taken from cs.indiana.edu

ctations. However, there are some differences which occur during the deciding procedure of vertexes that will be determined for finding the shortest path.

If there are negative values in the pre-defined paths of a specific network, Dijkstra’s algorithm is not useful to find the suitable shortest path. However, Bellman-Ford algorithm can handle negative weights/lengths and continue to complete the process unless there is a complete negative weighted cycle which is reachable from the source vertex in the network.

Image taken from withfriendship.com

The vertexes in Dijkstra’s algorithm contain the whole information of a network. There is no such thing that every vertex only cares about itself and its neighbors. On the other hand, Bellman-Ford algorithm’s nodescontain only the information that are related to. This information allows that node just to know about which neighbor nodes can it connect and the node that the relation come from, mutually.  Dijkstra’s algorithm is faster than Bellman-Ford’s algorithm however the second algorithm can be more useful to solve some problems, such as negative weights of paths.

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