(With apologies to Lewis Carroll and Paul Simon:)
"Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Avanade!" or "Arthur Andersen and Microsoft - Still Sneaky After All These Years".
Arthur Anderson has been the author of a festering wound in the exposed flank of the IT industry since the day, lo, those many years ago, when they decided that it would be a good idea to use their influence as a government sanctioned pseudo-monopoly to encourage their clients to also contract with their newly-created, wholly-owned subsidiary, Andersen Consulting, for all of their computer needs. Andersen Consulting changed their name formally to Accenture at the end of 2000 and severed "all remaining historical contractual ties between Arthur Andersen and Accenture", according to their web site.
The act of using influence as a firm's auditor to coerce clients into using your firm's other services is a textbook case of conflict of interest. In fact, just offering computer services probably meets the definition. But that was never enough for Andersen and their other like-minded cronies with a share of the audit franchise - they wanted to have it all, so they devised a business plan that guaranteed them huge profits, reduced competition, and removed nearly all alternatives for their helpless customers. Toward this end, they enlisted the help of other corporations (for whom, you guessed it, Andersen was the Auditor), plus the U.S. Congress and the IRS. The approach, in a nutshell, consisted of creating mediocre, very high-priced computer software and services and ramming them down client's throats with a two-pronged attack of encouraging them to use Andersen while discouraging them from hiring other consultants using their influence as auditors. At the same time, Andersen and others lobbied Congress to repeal the "safe harbor" rules and pass other measures that further strengthened their competitive position while weakening that of many of their possible competitors.
It would be nice to say that this whole insidious scheme crashed and burned along with Enron and Arthur Andersen's accounting division, but it's not true - it thrives to this day. While Accenture no longer has the clout it once had, due to the demise of their parent accounting firm, they have powerful allies like Microsoft that help them get major computer contracts.
This leads us to Avenade. Avenade is a joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture (80% owned by Accenture, according to Hoover's), who's main goal is make sure that every company that does business with Accenture or Microsoft's consulting group ends up with some .NET code, whether they want it or not. It works like this, Avenade hires a bunch of programmers and trains them to write certain types of .NET applications. Then Microsoft or Accenture brings them into a contract as a subcontractor, with or without the knowledge of the contracting firm, and has them fulfill a portion of the contract using .NET code. When the contract is finished, Avenade is frequently in a position to get a new contract to maintain the code they have written, because most companies have no .NET expertise, and in fact may not even want it. Once some enterprise functions are written in .NET, the company will either have to maintain it or hire someone else to re-write it on some other platform. Microsoft obviously thinks that by sowing these "seeds" they will eventually capture the lion's share of the development market. This strategy allows Microsoft to aggressively promote .NET from a more neutral position (Some corporations reject Microsoft .NET project proposals made by their employees because they are too "evangelical", according to an Avenade employee). It also gives both companies a great deal of flexibility in increasing or decreasing staffing, including completely shutting down Avenade at some point.
The names:
"Accenture is a coined word that connotes putting an accent or emphasis on the future, just as the firm focuses on helping its clients create their future."
"Avanade is a derivation of words that collectively convey the company's future-oriented and proactive approach to driving customer value: avan-, advance, advantage, avenue + -ade, action, act."
In other words, they just made them up.
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Microsoft Rolls Out the Tablet PC
By Greg Hill
November 8, 2002.
After years of threats, Microsoft and their hardware partners have begun selling the Tablet PC concept.
The Panel PC consists of a specialized piece of hardware along with the enabling software. Hardware comes in the form of an overgrown PDA (called the "slate tablet") or a monitor-like device that works connected to a desktop PC or stand-alone, or as part of a traditional laptop computer (called the "convertible"). Both types have in common a high resolution digitizing display with Clear Type display technology, weighing in at 3 pounds or less. The software consists of Windows XP for the Panel PC and the Office Pack, along with an SDK to enable software development.
What you get with the package is the ability to write on the screen with a stylus or to talk to it. Of course you can do that with your current laptop, but with the Panel PC, it actually accomplishes something other than permanent damage to an expensive piece of equipment.
When you write on the Tablet PC, "Digital Ink" is created which is recognized by the system as a n alternate input form to typing. The same is true of voice; the system recognizes and digitizes it. Of course, in both cases, the translation is not always exact.
So, given the impressive, whiz-bank technology, what are the actual advantages of the Tablet PC. In other words, why would most people want it instead of a laptop or PDA? During the demonstration, various presenters made the following points:
There are some places where typing is not practical. They mentioned in a milk truck, on a crowded airplane, and standing beside a police motorcycle writing a traffic ticket.
Sometimes typing is not an option, as in the case of paralysis, or when your hands must be free for other activities, or in the case where you just don't know how.
Writing is a more natural method of interfacing with computers, particularly when the software is specifically designed with that in mind.
What they didn't mention was that writing is usually much slower than typing, and if you lose the stylus you're pretty much screwed. Voice recognition, may be another story, since it's faster than typing and doesn't require a stylus, but very little emphasis was put on the voice recognition component.
One thing is for sure, if this thing catches on, the mouse will go the way of the buggy whip.
Microsoft also held a session to illuminate software developers on the method of programming for the Tablet PC using the SDK (software development kit). While they acknowledged the existence of COM objects for use in traditional Windows programming, the emphasis was on the .NET development platform, and tow new object classes named inkedit and inkpicture. Ink edit essentially replaces text boxes and rich text boxes in Windows Forms applications, automatically enabling stylus input, and recognition on Tablets. Inkpicture allows the display of a graphic and lets the user create a layer of unrecognized Digital Ink over it. For example, your program could display a map and allow the user to draw on it.
These items were cool, but there was no mention of how to enable other common items like listboxes or datagrids. Additionally, there is no save method in the inkpicture, so it is unclear how the picture and it's ink can be saved or transferred.
The SDK is available for download at www.microsoft.com. I downloaded it and was able to create applications in Visual Studio .NET, but could not really test them since Tablet PCs are not yet available and probably will be too expensive for quite a while.
In summary, it looks like Microsoft has developed a much better PenOS and even gone slightly beyond that. But it still looks like a niche market technology and unless or until there is a "killer application" you are not likely to see Tablet PCs in great numbers. That doesn't mean I wouldn't like to have one, mind you. The most likely scenario is that eventually most computers will include the Tablet PC features, much like most computers run Microsoft Windows today. Look at it as an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary technology.