Customer Reviews

The Power of Now: How Winning Companies Sense and Respond to Change Using Real-Time Technology

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I was eager to read this book, to understand how publish/subscribe in general and TIBCO middleware in particular change system architecture and business strategy. What is now possible that is not supported well by traditional client/server systems? And who would know more about this topic than Ranadive, the founder and CEO of TIBCO?

Unfortunately this book does not deliver. The examples are shallow, explaining a little but not to a deep enough level to communicate more than superficialities. And the text between the example is repetitive: too much breathless ad copy and not enough content.

Should be made compulsory reading for all chief executives who intend to stay on top of their organisations in the next few years. Ranadive not only explains how infomation will drive the economy (from yesterday), he gave concrete steps on how an organisation may move towards using info as a tool to maximise competitve advantage. Knowledge management, making the org live for the moment, being event-driven (and proactive to the latest drip of info)...etc... Ranadive outlines to great detail how one could set up a system to achieve it. The methodologies described are not singularly his own opinion: the book is well referenced and many top companies and gurus are already on to the new economy. Only negative is: a little bit too "techy" for the general CEO audience.

Do you want to join those who "Get it."? Or do you "get it" at all?

I was intrigued by the fact that Mr. Ranadive has managed to build one of the largest (market cap) software companies in the United States, and was pleased to find that a good section of his book concentrated on his philosophies when starting TIBCO. On the other hand, a good part of this book is spent hyping TIBCO's software...which you can't really blame the guy for, can you? This book is at least as much sales promotional material as anything else, but for those who are interested in TIBCO's software, it's quite informative; it's like getting a sales pitch from *the* sales guy himself.

Most of the philosophies Ranadive discusses seem more applicable to small companies than large, and I found the book lacking on discussions of the transition from small private company to 20 Billion dollar public company. On the other hand, to those of us who are still trying to form a successful small private company, this gap won't be important for a little while yet. And since successful people rarely want company, maybe it's not coincidence he didn't include that last missing link!

The book covered some of the real-time technology that TIBCO and other IT firms developed. But it is outdated. The environment now in year 2003 is very different.

The book makes a good pitch for real-time information systems. However the treatment of the topic is shallow. There are very few case studies, almost all alike. Reading the same few stories over and over without a fresh look results in a lot of wasted pages. If your business deals with pure real time information delivery, like a news agency or a trading firm, the book may be sufficient. For any other kind of business a lot is left to the imagination of the reader.

I find the topic very interesting and the book fueled this interest. On the other hand I was left unsatisfied. Wish the authors did not spend so many pages on their products and tried to explore the business dimensions. If I were looking for one book to recommend to our CIO on real-time enterprise, this book is not it.

Although well written for the audience noted on the cover, IT Leaders, this book further widens the gap between business and IT people. A key problem in business is aligning IT with the needs of the business. This book widens the gap three ways; by claiming that business is helped by making more information move faster throughout an enterprise, by showing solutions featuring the same old technologies of baud, bytes and mips and by suggesting that publish - subscribe is a key solution. P-S was around before William Randolph Hearst, is the voluntary mode of information glut and is part of the problem, not the solution. The key point the author missed, or chose to ignore, is ontology. Nowhere in the IT architecture he touts is there a place for an ontology of the business. And from the examples given, I conclude that he thinks a key words taxonomy is sufficient and that the representations of the enterprise as embedded in the various application software packages are sufficient. At a time when Peter Drucker's "Management Challenges for the 21st Century" is imploring the IT industry to give management more I and less T, I find this book to be another case of the IT denizens advising themselves that more mips, bytes and baud will be the savior of business. Meanwhile, CEO's world-wide are wondering why information technologists cannot contribute to the need for decision flow, based on commonality of meaning , and do not create high fidelity models of what the enterprise wants to be.

This book is for those who need to use real time technology for Business Advantage and remain competitive in the connected economy. The author focuses on key concepts of "Push Technology" and describes how different it is from the conventional "Pull Technology" of the client/server world. The implications for decision makers is profound- Act in real time or fail in Business.

It is interesting to see how leading companies like Bechtel are using this model to their advantage. The birth place of this concept and its development as a technology is the trading floor of financial markets where information is money in real time.

After giving the conceptual framework, the technical model and case studies, the book ends with issues like leadership and vision that are essential to make this happen- Transforming your company into a "Event-driven Organization".

The author draws heavily (with appropriate references) from contemporary literature on Business Management . Among all the books and articles mentioned it appears that he is most impressed and inspired by "Enterprise One to One : Tools for Competing in the Interactive Age by Peppers and Roger ".

At the end is a glossary that is useful for ready reference.

Take the "Litmus Test" of Chapter 2 ; You will start reading the book - in real time !

Thanks Vivek - I had a "Real week-end" with your book. ( Meanwhile please remember to return the workstation to Scott Mc Nealy - It is High Noon you did so !)

This book inspired me to start a company called KnowNow; I have bought a copy of the book for every executive who has joined my company to inspire them, too. The Power Of Now is a business-focused treatise on the use of publish-subscribe technology in creating highly responsive business processes. Though I agree with the reviewer who claimed the writing style is somewhat dry, I do think it is the most compelling book I've read that makes the case for IT strategists to transition to infrastructure that supports real-time applications.

Vivek Ranadive's book says technology has changed the way business is conducted. Having seemingly stated the obvious, though, he tells you what this means. This technology has spawned "the event-driven revolution," a transforming shift in how corporations act. The book begins with the early transformation of the financial services industry to an event-driven business. It goes on to discuss enterprise business applications, and then the Internet. Throughout, the author addresses the differences between contemporary and event-driven business models, with great emphasis on the event-driven model. This book is densely written, yet surprisingly easy to read. Ranadive provides a good background for students and Internet entrepreneurs (all those who think the event-driven business world started with Jim Clark and Netscape are in for a shock). We [...] recommend this book to leaders thinking of shifting to an event-driven business mode. You'll also like it if you want enough background to join the conversation about how event-driven organizations function.

If there is one business-oriented IT strategy book on the rather esoteric (and somewhat unglamorous) subject of "middleware infrastructure," this is it! In this book, Vivek Ranadive makes a compelling business case to CEOs, CIOs and CFOs to invest in event-driven real-time infrastructure, citing success stories from leading global financial companies including Goldman Sachs and Nomura.