Unicom EA Forum

Philip Boxer and Richard Veryard will be speaking at the Unicom Enterprise Architecture Forum in London on Thursday September 29th. Summary Philip’s presentation on Slideshare Supporting Social Complexity in Collaborative Enterprises Richard’s presentation on Slideshare…

Boundary Perimeter Edge

by Richard Veryard We can use the three asymmetries to appreciate different strategies for security and trust, such as deperimeterization. First we need some definitions: Boundary refers to a discontinuity in a physical system, Perimeter…

The madness of movie advertising

by Richard Veryard
There are increasing problems with cross-subsidy in many industries, as the once predictable linkages between the loss-making elements and the profitable elements are eroded. This in turn calls into question the integration logic (“North-South”) on which many large firms are (have been) based. To support a relational strategy instead of a positional strategy, such firms must develop a new kind of integration logic (“East-West”).

Two-Sided Markets

by Richard Veryard
In his HBS March interview, Andrei Hagiu identifies Wal-Mart as an example of an organization that is transforming from a traditional merchant into a two-sided platform. Let’s look at the (asymmetric) structure of this transformation.

Enterprise IT

by Richard Veryard In his Confused of Calcutta blog, JP Rangaswami (now CIO of BT’s Services Division) picks up a definition of Enterprise Architecture from Andrew McAfee: “IT that specifies business processes”. JP argues that…

Healthcare Reforms

by Richard Veryard
There are two interesting aspects of the attempted reforms of healthcare in the UK and elsewhere: the muddled notions of power to the edge embodied by some of the proposals, and the repeated attempts to enact similar reforms over the past thirty years.

Managing to Relationship

by Richard Veryard
Masood Mortazavi uses Transaction Cost Economics to explain the difference between Managing to Contract vs. Managing to Relationship. In this post, I want to link this discussion to the key notion of Asymmetric Demand.

Security and Symmetry

by Richard Veryard
In a symmetric world, there is a clear distinction between genuine customers and hostile attackers – and the task of security is to tell them apart and keep them apart.
In an asymmetric world, this distinction breaks down.