Dick’s Sporting Software

Interesting read from The Wall Street Journal’s “CIO Journal” about Dick’s Sporting Goods building all of its software in house:

Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. is betting that building all its software in house, as opposed to relying on third-party vendors, will give it a competitive advantage.

Chief Technology Officer Paul Gaffney is spearheading the effort after taking a similar approach at his previous employer, Home Depot Inc.

“In a lot of retail, there’s been a tradition that tools were designed at headquarters and inflicted on the store [employees]. We’ve been trying to turn that around,” said Mr. Gaffney, who joined Dick’s in late 2017.

In 2019, Gaffney indicates that his staff “will finish the transition to in-house software for all its e-commerce platforms, after developing new software for inventory tracking.”

The eight-person team that developed the inventory software has a self-imposed goal to earn at least 10 times the cost of the team in annual revenue. The goal was set in October and the team is about halfway there, Mr. Gaffney said, adding that he tells his staff: “Don’t get excited about shipping a feature—get excited about when the feature turns into revenue and turns into profit.”

Example: 

Thanks to its tech overhaul, Dick’s is now able to list sports products online within 30 minutes of a major event, such as a championship win or a player trade, Mr. Gaffney said. Previously, that used to take three to five days, he said. “Our ability to do that really depends on us controlling all of the elements of the pipeline,” he said.

The story points out that Dick’s e-commerce sales have increased 17 percent in the quarter ended February 2 from the year-earlier period, and that “transforming the technology group has improved productivity and the customer experience.”

The new inventory software—developed by a team comprising six engineers, a design manager and a product manager—was deployed to all stores in September. The tool provides real-time product information, inventory availability and alternative product recommendations. Ease of use is a priority for all newly built technology, because it helps attract younger talent used to consumer technology products, Mr. Gaffney said. Dick’s is one of several companies who are revamping technology to suit the millennial workforce.

Build it and they will come…and buy.

Unleash The Lion

Today Apple released the latest version of its operating system, dubbed OS X “Mountain Lion,” which includes a more robust messaging capability, integrated dictation, expanded integration of social apps like Facebook and Twitter, and over 200 other new features.

Today’s the day Apple unleashed another wild cat out into the digital wild, this time in the form of Macintosh OS X “Mountain Lion.”

This release could be characterized as a more minor upgrade than that from “Leopard” to “Snow Leopard,” but still bears mentioning, particularly for all you Mac fan boys and girls.

Apple’s Web site for Mountain Lion asserts over 200 new features, including a new “Dictation” capability, which allows you to “talk anywhere you can type.”

Though this may seem pedestrian enough, as a Dragon Dictation user, I’ll look forward to giving this new integrated voice capability a test drive (and it’s certainly a deal, considering the $19.99 price tag for the upgrade, compared to the $100+ cost of full dictation products like Dragon Dictate).

Other notable features are the new and more integrated social applications supporting Facebook and Twitter. Now, you simply sign in once and your Mac can share to Facebook. Notification Center and Contacts also are now fully integrated.

Mountain Lion has similar capabilities for Twitter, allowing you to Tweet from key Apple apps (Safari, Preview, Finder, Photo Booth, Quick Look), and to more easily share links and photos from iPhoto.

Also notable, the new “Messages,” which allows you to send messages to anyone who has an iPhone, iPad, or iPod using iOS5 or later (or another Mac running Mountain Lion). This will also allow you to send iMessages to a phone number or email address associated with an Apple ID.

MG Siegler with TechCrunch has been previewing Mountain Lion for several months and blogs that “notifications are the most in-your-face and probably best new feature of Mountain Lion,” explaining that we’re used to dozens of apps alerting us to things. The Messaging app streamlines those messages into a more unified stream.

The details: Mountain Lion is available here in the Mac App Store, and for the princely sum of $19.99, you’ll be able to upgrade ALL your machines to ML.

Me, I’ll suffer the delayed gratification of waiting for the bugs to get cleaned up before I throw down my Mastercard.

IBM 2Q 2012 Earnings: $3.51 EPS (Up 14% YOY), $25.8 Billion Revenue

IBM 2012 second quarter earnings were just released, and IBM’s operating earnings per share (non-GAAP) came in above expectations at $3.51/share, a 14 percent increase YOY.

Revenue came in at $25.8 billion, down 3 percent YOY, but up 1 percent YOY when adjusted for common currency.

Operating net income was $4.1 billion, up 8 percent YOY, and free cash flow came in at $3.7 billion, up 9 percent YOY.

Second quarter segment highlights included software revenue led by Europe, Japan and the growth markets, and services profit, which was up 18 percent (with the services backlog flat at constant currency).

IBM’s software business reported revenues of $6.2 billion, which were up 4 percent when adjusted for common currency.

Once again, the WebSphere brand led the way, coming in at 3 percent growth YOY (7 percent when adjusted for common currency).

The Tivoli brand grew 2 percent YOY, 6 percent when adjusted for common currency. Overall gross margins for the software business were flat at 88.4 percent, but pre-tax income was $2.5 billion, up some 8 percent YOY.

IBM’s Systems and Technology group revenues were negatively impacted by the product cycle, coming in down 9 percent YOY, but STG gained share in the POWER systems segment.

IBM saw continued strength in its growth initiatives, with growth markets realizing YTD revenue growth of 9 percent YOY when adjusted for constant currency, and its business analytics business up 13 percent YOY.

Cloud computing revenue doubled YOY, and Smarter Planet revenue grew by over 20 percent YOY.

IBM’s annuity business provided a solid base of revenue, profit, and cash, and productivity initiatives drove structural improvements and helped contribute to IBM’s margin expansion.

Following is what IBM CEO Ginny Rometty had to say about IBM’s 2Q 2012 earnings:

“In the second quarter, we delivered strong profit, earnings per share and free cash flow growth. This performance reflects continued strength in our growth initiatives and investments in higher value opportunities,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM president and chief executive officer. “These are fundamental elements of our long-term business model.

“Looking ahead, we are well positioned to deliver greater value to a wider range of clients and to our shareholders. Given our performance in the first half and our outlook for the second half, we are raising our full-year operating earnings per share expectations to at least $15.10.”

(Almost) Live From IBM Innovate 2012

I wasn’t able to make it down to Orlando for the IBM Innovate event, as I’m preparing to participate in an annual Watson family rite: My father’s annual member-guest golf tournament.  We won the competition two years ago for the first time, and last year, not so much.

So, this year I’m out for …. well, not blood.  Just a much lower golf score.

However, I wasn’t too busy to check in and watch some of the tidings from Innovate 2012 via the Livestream coverage, then chat about it with mi amigo Scott Laningham, who is holding down the broadcasting fort quite nicely.

If you’re a frequent viewer of our podcasts (or even if you’re not), you ought to get a kick out of my persona: A laptop sitting on the sofa with a picture of me.  We tried to use Skype video to do the back and forth, but the Internet connection on the ground simply wasn’t big enough for my booming persona!

Thanks to Scott and Jesse and the crew on the ground in Orlando for helping me participate. It’s not easy being the virtual me, especially when I cannot decide which pair of shoes to wear!

IBM Promotes Collaboration, Reduces Complexity Using Jazz

The IBM Innovate 2011 event kicks into its third day down in Orlando, and the announcements have already started streaming out of the event, as has the Livestream coverage for those of you who couldn’t make it to Orlando.

Today, IBM announced new software that helps organizations collaborate more efficiently throughout the entire software and systems development process.  It allows developer teams to quickly access resources and work across global boundaries through an open, collaborative development environment.

This was a theme we heard consistently in yesterday’s keynote session, the need to be more agile, more collaborative, and increasingly across spatial and temporal boundaries.

Improving the Economics of Software Development

To reiterate the point, just glance through the topline of the latest IBM CEO Study which covered 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide.  Two-thirds of global organizations manage software development teams working in multiple locations.

The study also found there is a growing unpredictability in getting software through development and into is full application within an organization.  More than 62% of development projects fail to meet the intended schedule and 30% of project costs are due to rework and poor execution of requirements.

The new software helps organizations align their software investments with business process and operations across an entire organization, creating stronger linkages between planning and execution.  It’s now possible to tap into talent wherever it is located, quickly accessing resources and include appropriate decision makers throughout the entire business cycles.

Built on Jazz

The new software offerings are built on Jazz, IBM’s open software development platform that supports sharing and interactions among software and systems design and development teams.

New features allow developers to interact quickly; share data instantaneously from any source in the development process and connect teams and development communities in new ways.

• Collaborative Design Management: Enables teams to integrate designs seamlessly with other development tasks and information, such as requirements, code, and quality management assets. The benefits of this approach enhance the traceability of all actions, allowing their impact on the process to be analyzed.  Team members and other stakeholders can review, contribute and change solution designs with complete transparency to every participant in the project.
• Collaborative Lifecycle Management: The IBM Rational solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management helps software development teams improve their productivity by offering an integrated application lifecycle management (ALM) solution to avoid the pitfalls of working in silos with broken communication, which results in project delays, low quality or budget overruns.
• Collaborative Development and Operations:  New technologies, such as cloud computing, workload optimization and Agile development are driving the need for development and operations to work more closely than ever before. IBM has created new integrations between many of its leading software offerings that can significantly assist in bridging the cultural divide between development and operation teams.

Visit IBM Rational to learn more about these new offerings.

And don’t forget to tune in for tomorrow’s (Wednesday, June 8th) opening session at Innovate 2011 at 8 AM EST, whereupon Grady Booch will discuss the IBM Watson technology.

UPDATE: developerWorks’ guru (and my good buddy) Scott Laningham has been very busy talking to folks on the show floor at Innovate.  You can check out his excellent interviews here.

 

 

 

 

Secure By Design

Here’s a couple of sound bytes for you that were shared earlier today at the Rational Innovate conference down in Orlando:

• 49% of web apps have vulnerabilities.
• 67% of web apps with vulnerabilities did not have a patch at end of 2009.

Yowser.  If that doesn’t give you the web security hee bee jee bees, I’m not sure what will.

Facing a rapidly changing and increasingly sophisticated threat environment, and the adoption of new computing paradigms such as cloud computing, organizations are searching for new ways to handle increased risk and complexity.  

Businesses and governments around the world are making investments in new technologies and business models that make them more efficient, agile and competitive.

However, these new technologies are also introducing new risks that are compromising critical infrastructures, privacy and identity, requiring organizations to rethink how they deal with compliance, risk management and data protection.

IBM has been working hard in the background on improving security capabilities for business, and today introduced several new pieces of software, and services, that help organizations build security into the initial design of their applications – as opposed to bolting it on as an afterthought when it becomes much more costly to fix.

Central to IBM’s approach to addressing clients’ security challenges is a shift in focus from securing assets to securing critical services. IBM’s Secure By Design initiative and IBM Security Services are helping clients build security into the fabric of the services they deliver, making security intrinsic to their business processes, product development and daily operations, while addressing emerging compliance constructs.

Today’s announcements from Orlando include several new offerings that can help organizations lower cost and reduce risk:

• Access Management: Software that can help organizations provide users with secure access to their servers, applications and environments, across new service delivery platforms, including cloud computing;
• Security Testing: Software that enables businesses to automatically test source code and identify potential security and compliance risks during the earliest stages of software development;
• Source Code Assessment Services: Services that help clients assess their application security, identify vulnerabilities and provide recommendations for resolution;
• Secure Engineering Framework: A proven blueprint for building and deploying secure software.

New Software to Secure Access and Execute Security Policies

As customers drive new Web-based services and portal initiatives, they must balance the growing need for exposing data with the ability to provide secure access to these critical resources on a need to know basis.

Today, IBM introduced new updates for the Tivoli Access Manager family to help organizations provide centralized authentication, policy management and access control services across several new service delivery platforms, such as cloud computing and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as well as complex portal and Web application environments.

These new updates can also help protect access to critical data across an organization. As delivery models continue to shift and cause more complexity, these new enhancements can help organizations securely manage access to business-critical applications and data while giving users fast, convenient access to the information they need.

New Software to Identify Security Vulnerabilities at the Source Code Level

Building on the momentum of its recent acquisition of security vendor Ounce Labs, IBM is further strengthening its security portfolio today by introducing AppScan Source Edition, a new addition to its Web application security and compliance portfolio.

This new version of AppScan provides a comprehensive solution for organizations concerned about correcting security vulnerabilities in applications before they go live, when they are less costly to fix. 

To address the aforementioned attacks, businesses should take a more holistic approach to designing critical applications and services with security woven in at the earliest stages of development. The traditional "bolt-on" approach of adding on security after systems are developed or implemented is no longer effective.

The AppScan family combines the static code analysis testing expertise from Ounce Labs with Rational’s existing dynamic testing capabilities to allow organizations to adopt security analysis across the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design, through coding and into production.

Designed to deliver faster analysis and better triage of results with greater accuracy, AppScan Source Edition offers clients expanded support for several development languages, the ability to manage more than one million findings and integrations that enable enterprise & regulatory compliance reporting and better collaboration.

The AppScan product family is the only portfolio that offers both static and dynamic analysis testing in one solution.

New Source Code Assessment Services 

For organizations that lack in-house application security expertise or prefer to outsource testing security assessments, IBM today is also launching Application Source Code Security Assessment.  These new services are designed to help clients understand and improve their regulatory compliance and reduce risk by providing a baseline assessment of the source code of applications to encourage building security into the SDLC.

Through this new service, IBM consultants test applications for clients, identify security vulnerabilities and provide recommendations for prioritization and detailed remediation steps to resolve the vulnerabilities.

Best Practices for Designing Secure Software Products

To help clients, IT companies, academics, etc. implement a secure, end-to-end approach to product delivery, IBM has recently published "Security in Development: The IBM Secure Engineering Framework."

The framework provides best practices around security that are increasingly a requirement for developing products and applications that run in the world’s digital infrastructure.

IBM’s new Secure Engineering Framework helps clients implement a secure, end-to-end approach to product delivery.

Attention to security is required across both the global supply chain and the development processes to deliver products that have appropriate security characteristics and resistance to vulnerabilities. The goal of this framework is to enable greater collaboration with others in the industry, standards bodies and governments around the world to refine how organizations approach security.

IBM’s approach to security helps customers manage risk from end-to-end, across all five security focus areas: data and information; application and process; people and identity; network, server and end point; and physical infrastructure.

Visit here to learn more about other strategic announcements emerging from the IBM Innovate 2010 conference.