Service Offerings
 Technology Consulting – FutureSense Research (in its current & previous forms) has provided technology consulting services to a wide variety of companies, from pre-funding start-ups, to small & medium size technology firms such as Agile Software & Iona Technologies to the largest technology companies such as EMC, IBM & Microsoft. This consulting is generally focused on several areas including:
- Exploration & integration of emerging software & process technologies into current or new product development streams or process streams – examples are: 1) the development of a collaboration application for IT project & program management (PPM), 2) the design for integration of IM into collaboration & PPM application, 3) the integration of reasoning technology with business process execution & analysis.
- Development of new work processes to address new business models – the design of new work process for complex IT program management, the design of new work process for drug design R & D.
- Evaluation & optimization of product design or product design process – the evaluation of a large healthcare information system for conversion to Open Source development.
Alignment of business & technology strategy – It has been my experience that many companies, even those that are quite established, have poor alignment between their business & technology strategies. This often occurs when a founder is either focused on Marketing & Sales to the neglect of technology, or vice versa. The symptoms tend to be things like Marketing & Sales strategy emphasizing product features & directions that are infeasible or impossible, &/or product technology (features/functions) being developed for their own sake. Sound familiar? FutureSense has developed a “workshop” format that explores alignment & makes specific recommendations for solutions. It is structured to take between 2-4 days depending on the scope of the problems or the size of the business.
- Technology trends analysis – FutureSense Research also provides consulting on the implications of near, medium & long-term technology trends on a company’s technology & business strategy. This generally takes the form of one-day engagements that focus on a specific trend. Several engagements may be necessary to fully cover a company’s strategic scope.
- Finally, the Founder & Principal of FutureSense Research (David Hartzband) writes several (3 or 4) papers a year on the analysis of software & process technology trends. Most recently he has written on the convergence of business communications technologies & the larger implications of this for how work is evolving in companies. His latest paper focuses on the evolution of search from a technical feature of database & then web enabled applications to a core part of how near-future work will be structured. The title of this latest paper is If Search is the Answer, What’s the Question? (with apologies & respect for Danny Bobrow of Xerox PARC whose paper If Prolog is the Answer, What’s the Question? is still one of the most cogent & influential papers on computer language theory (IMHO)).
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