By Nenshad Bardoliwalla

In the wake of the long-running massive industry consolidation in the Enterprise Software industry that reached its zenith with the acquisitions of Business Intelligence market leaders Hyperion, Cognos, and Business Objects in 2007, one could certainly have been forgiven for being less than optimistic about the prospects of innovation in the Analytics, Business Intelligence, and Performance Management markets.  This is especially true given the dozens of innovative companies that each of these large best of breed vendors themselves had acquired before being acquired in turn.  While the pace of innovation has slowed to a crawl as the large vendors are midway through digesting the former best of breed market leaders, thankfully for the health of the industry, nothing could be further from the truth in the market overall.  This market has in fact shown itself to be very vibrant, with a resurgence of innovative offerings springing up in the wake of the fall of the largest best of breed vendors. So what are the trends and where do I see the industry evolving to?  Few of these are mutually exclusive, but in order to provide some categorization to the discussion, they have been broken down as follows:

While we are still in the first few weeks of the new year I through it would be good to look at come of the things you should focus on during 2010 to.

In no particular order here is my list of 10 things to do in 2010:

1. Insurance
The outsourcer should have adequate public liability insurance against loss or liability through injury or damage.
2. Third party suppliers
The arrangements as to which party (purchaser or outsourcer) will hold and which party will administer the terms of any agreements currently in place between the purchaser and other third party suppliers. It is advisable to transfer the Maintenance contracts to the outsourcer unless the outsourcer has agreed to provide maintenance services for all equipment and software.
3. Software licenses
Where third parties supply software used to provide outsourced services, the appropriate licenses must be obtained. Any licenses currently held by the purchaser that relate to services being provided may need to be extended to cover the activities of the outsourcer.

By Robert Nyman: Stop developing for Internet Explorer 6

This proposal might seem a bit drastic, but please allow me to present my case.

Where we are today

This year, it is eight years since Internet Explorer 6 was released. A couple of years later, the three main competing web browsers had all reached a very competent state when it came to especially CSS and JavaScript support, and started challenging Internet Explorer. Since then, all web browser have released newer and better versions.

Following are the validations done while testing a website.

1. User Interface or Usability Testing
2. Functionality
3. Interface testing
4. Compatibility Testing
5. Load / Stress Testing or Performance Testing
6. Security Testing