NOTE: Pacific-Tier Communications invites guest bloggers to provide articles that would be of interest, and benefit to our readers. This week we are happy to introduce Mr. Andy Slater, CMO, Presence Networks.

‘‘The ‘Command and Control’ management style enjoyed by many CEOs in the past has gone. Today teamwork and collaboration are the norm. Leadership the accepted management style, people orientated collaboration the culture, people centric technology the facilitator.’’

We stand at a transition point in business. As the global economy starts to work its way out of recession CEO’s and management teams around the world are beginning to plan for growth. But they won’t do that by simply taking back into their businesses the bottom line costs they just spent 18 painful months getting rid of. The enlightened are looking for a new ways of working, how to unlock the people power in their organization in a secure and focused manner, to accelerate speed of decision making, reduce costs, and drive productivity.

Technology has been at the centre of social and industrial change since the printing press. Through history there have been transition points. The invention of the flying shuttle by John Kay heralded the start of the industrial revolution. The spread of democracy around the world can be traced to the invention of the telephone by Graham Bell and its adoption around the world. Suddenly totalitarian states could no longer constrain the flow of people’s ideas, information, and aspirations.

More recently mobile devices and the internet has accelerated the flow of information with images and video, so now international public opinion can be formed and galvanized by what were once isolated events. The video of student Neda Agha-Soltan’s shooting in Iran caught on a mobile phone started an outcry around the world which is still vocal today.

Social networking has become the norm for many who ‘tweet’ their way through the day sharing thoughts on everything, from the mildly interesting to the creative. The need to communicate is infectious and has a profound effect on the way we live – and work. Given a common cause, people power is unstoppable.

 The ability of these new people networks has been recognized by business where the more enlightened maintain Online Brand protection programmes, write blogs, tweet, and endeavour to instigate viral campaigns to manipulate networks to their own advantage.

But is this relevant to business ?

A ‘company’ is called that simply because it is made up of people. How many companies say that their most valuable asset is their people? How true it is. Try running a railway without drivers or signal men, or running software development without programmers. People matter and leading managers recognize what’s happening in social networking can be harnessed to drive their businesses – people power, or business collaboration. Indeed, some would say it can’t be stopped – adapt or die.

The nature and culture of management in business has changed already. The ‘Command and Control’ management style enjoyed by many CEOs in the past has gone. Today teamwork and collaboration are the norm. Leadership the accepted management style, people orientated collaboration the culture, people centric technology the facilitator.

IT has to step up to this challenge to enable these new strategies – only if it can deliver business solutions, not just fancy names for the same technology, will it meet the true business need. Collaboration in the business environment is recognised as being one of the key tools CEO’s are looking at to drive productivity for the next decade – particularly if it can be delivered without complexity or capital investment.

To make the successful transition their vision has to be converted into a strategy. A strategy that addresses the three pillars of change – Culture, Technology and Process.

You can’t identify at the start of a shift in business culture all the business aspects that will be impacted, but you can describe the vision; a culture where information travels to the right people, any time, in any place, on any device. Where virtual teams form rapidly to solve business problems then dissolve just as quickly, without management intervention. No more ‘I sent an e-mail’ excuses but effective communication between empowered people.

The process of creating this culture needs to be led by a management that believes and demonstrates it through the way they act and how they communicate. The benefits are business processes that will be changed, new ones invented, and many scrapped. This is long term business development, a journey, not a light-switch change – but a revolution when looked back on from the future.

The technology to achieve this has to be invisible. People centric technology is intuitive, adopted because it engages its users, inspires and opens up new horizons. You know its right when your people can’t function without it.

Cloud Computing, Software-as-a-Service, and Unified Communications are all technical developments which alone do not deliver cultural change (except maybe in the IT department). These will be part of the solution, but are not the ‘end game’.

The application that runs in the world of the users, that gives them a real-time window on their business world, enables them to interact with people based on their availability, skills, interests and knowledge in a secure way, will be the deliverer of cultural change. This will be the application that grows productivity for businesses, for the next decade.

Andy Slater

You can contact Andy at andy.slater@pnglobal.net  or visit Presence Network’s website at http://www.presence-networks.net

Fornecedores estruturam oferta. CEO da Plusoft acredita que aplicativos de gestão de clientes serão vendidos apenas como serviço
 

Os sistemas de gestão de clientes (CRM, na sigla em inglês) evoluíram consideravelmente ao longo dos últimos anos e ganharam espaço no universo corporativo. Um pouco pelo aperfeiçoamento tecnológico, um tanto devido à evangelização sobre as potencialidades da ferramenta e muito graças às lições aprendidas nos meses de turbulência econômica – informação virou um artigo valioso no direcionamento de estratégias.

No primeiro semestre, a IDC percorreu 339 empresas brasileiras e descobriu que uma das três prioridades dos CEOs vincula-se a entender melhor e aprimorar o atendimento aos clientes. “Durante o período de crise, muitas empresas descobriram que tinham pouca ou nenhuma informação para tomar decisões”, comenta Reinaldo Roveri, gerente de análise de mercado da consultoria no País, apontando que CRM e BI, assim, entraram mais fortemente na pauta.

Pelo que mostram os acontecimentos, a proliferação dos conceitos de web 2.0 impulsionarão transformações ainda mais profundas nesse tipo de tecnologia e impactarão as rotinas dos usuários. Duas orientações são latentes: o advento da computação em nuvem que transforma quase tudo em serviço e a importância das redes sociais.

Fornecedores estão atentos a essas duas frentes. “Em um prazo de três anos, não enxergo mais a venda de licenças de CRM”, prevê Guilherme Porto, CEO da fabricante nacional desse tipo de ferramenta Plusoft, acreditando que esses aplicativos serão vendidos como serviço (SaaS, na sigla em inglês). O executivo apoia sua afirmação numa orientação percebida junto aos seus clientes. “Hoje, em 50% das cotações, os clientes já pedem opções tanto no modelo de venda quanto no de locação de software”, avalia o executivo, citando que há cerca de dois anos, o porcentual girava na casa dos 15%.

Roveri, da IDC, é um pouco mais conservador nas previsões, mas compartilha a visão do executivo. “Este modelo de entrega (SaaS) é uma forte tendência”, avalia, sem precisar uma data para transformação completa no modelo de venda dos sistemas. O especialista justifica sua opinião com a atratividade da compra “como serviço”, a capacidade de otimização do fluxo de caixa e ao avanço das redes e da internet.

Os provedores de tecnologia atentaram-se para a tendência e traçam suas estratégias. Nesse campo de batalha, a Microsoft luta com seu CRM Online; a Oracle contra-ataca com o CRM on Demand e a Salesforce.com tenta ostentar o estandarte de um dos ícones e pioneira no mercado de sistemas de gestão de clientes no modelo SaaS.

Assim como seus concorrentes internacionais, a Plusoft quer aproveitar as mensagens do mercado e atender as duas tendências que se anunciam. Há cerca de três meses, a empresa investiu R$ 700 mil em desenvolvimento e fechou parceria para hospedar uma versão “as a service” de seu CRM nos data centers do UOL. De acordo com Porto, a tecnologia é um dos ingredientes da “loja de aplicativos” anunciada pela unidade de host da empresa de internet.

Dois contratos – ambos por um prazo de 36 meses – foram fechados até o momento. O acordo, com uma universidade e uma empresa do setor agroquímico, contempla 56 posições comercializadas a R$ 189, cada.

Porto estima que a iniciativa de CRM SaaS represente entre 18 e 20% do faturamento (não revelado) da Plusoft no ano de 2010 e ajudar a companhia a ingressar em uma camada de clientes de médio porte. A ferramenta, por exemplo, poderá ser comercializada pelo UOL, que pagará comissão à fabricante.

O software de gestão desenvolvido pela companhia nacional se divide em seis partes. Uma delas, lançado no final de agosto, alinha-se justamente à outra tendência que permeia o mercado. Batizado de iCustomer, o módulo mapeia e analisa redes sociais.

Em meados de novembro, a Salesforce.com – um dos expoentes no fornecimento de CRM no modelo SaaS – apresentou a ferramenta Chatter. O sistema é um mix entre uma aplicação de colaboração corporativa e uma plataforma de desenvolvimento social, provando que os conceitos de web 2.0 se enraízam no mercado. 

Which is more appropriate for the Travel Industry?

Since the launch of Apple’s iPhone the mobile industry has been in a state of flux. It has witnessed lot of innovations since then. Today, more choices are available to the user than ever before which has resulted in a fragmented market. It has complicated matters for every organization which wants to reach out to their consumers through mobile devices. There are too many platforms to be supported and there is no standardization. Some industry segments have not made any significant move to reach out to their consumer through mobile platform and are playing a waiting game – waiting for the technology to mature. However, the travel industry cannot afford to do that.

A mobile phone is a personal device – more personal than the “personal” computer. You might lend your PC to coworker or a friend for few hours but can you imagine lending your mobile phone?

Travel is also a personal activity. Nobody else can do it for you. Unlike retail shopping you cannot get your friend or family member to do it for you. Though you might get somebody to do the planning for you, it is necessary for you to be aware of the logistics when you travel.

So, the match between travel and mobile seems to be a match made in heaven where a personal device meets a personal activity. Naturally, there is a lot of interest in travel industry on reaching out to the customer through the mobile. In this fragmented technology scenario, one of the following two strategies can be followed.

1. Take the shortcut and extend your web site and make it accessible from the browser in the mobile phone
2. Do it the hard way by incurring the cost of developing a native application for multiple mobile platforms

Advantages of Browser Based Mobile Application (Mobile Web)

• The variability across different types of handset is minimal compared to mobile application. You have to take care of only browser specific differences and the difference of screen size – unlike mobile app where the total programming environment including the programming language is different
• No need for the user to download and install any application on the handset – this can be a stumbling block for first time user
• The existing web site with modifications can be extended to the mobile – unlike mobile app where the application has to be develop ground up

Advantages of Native Mobile Application (Mobile App)

• The application can be location aware – unlike a mobile web application which do not have access the location information
• Offline working is possible – availability of internet connection and bandwidth cannot yet be taken for granted, especially for a traveler
• Can access the native mobile functionality like phone book, calendar & camera – for an application to be effective on a device which is personal, it needs to interface with functionalities which gives the device the personal flavor

What about a Hybrid Approach?

There are several possibilities:

1. Invoke the browser for the native application and show a specific web page – the problem is you lose control
2. Make a browser instance within your application and show the page – you have better control but all mobiles do not support this feature

None of these alternatives reduce the headache of having to maintain different applications for different platform.

A way forward in the future may be to access handset specific functionality from the browser through browser plug-in? Please correct me if I am wrong, but to the best of my knowledge it is not possible yet.

What is the Future?

Though predicting the future is always hazardous, the following can be predicted without too much risk.

• Smart phones will become much more powerful
• Network access speeds will become faster
• Touch screen and multi-touch will become standard
• Mobile will remain a personal device and it will become an extension of us

Unlike PC, which can be thought of as a dumb terminal accessing applications in the cloud, mobile phones cannot be treated that way. It already behaves as an extension of our memory and it is also going to act as our identity.

So, the conclusion – I do not see native mobile applications going away – especially when we are on the move!

If you’re anything like me (and since you’re reading this post, you probably are), you do one of two things upon booting-up your computer: 1) Open your browser, or 2) open your e-mail client – if it’s not your browser.  Being online / networked is pretty much a necessary part of computing.  If you don’t believe me, just unplug your network cable, and turn off your WiFi.  I can assure you the experience won’t be very satisfying.

There’s one company that gets it, and as far as I’m concerned, is leading the movement to Software As A Service (SaaS) for the general internet user: Google.  I’m still really new to using a lot of Google’s services and applications outside of Search, but here’s what I can tell you so far.  These services are easy to setup, they’re pervasive, and they simply work.  You hearing this, Microsoft?  My Google odyssey began with my reading of Six Pixel’s Of Separation by Mitch Joel.  In his book, Mitch writes about personal branding, and being able to leverage Web 2.0 services to grow your personal (and your business’) brand.  The first step to doing this is to be aware of what people are saying about you or your business online.  Here’s what I did…

• Setup a Gmail account: Even if you have an existing e-mail account, or two or three.  The gmail account is the account name that will be employed to utilize many of Google’s services.  Don’t forget to review all your contacts to see if any of them have gmail accounts.  If so, invite them as friends.
• Setup Google Alerts: It’s important to know what people are saying about you and where.  With the Google Alerts service, you can literally have Google notify you (on a frequency you determine), when your name is mentioned… pretty much anywhere on the internet.  You can also setup notifications for other important words or phrases, like the title of your blog, or important events, etc.  You can obviously configure the Alerts to go to your newly created Gmail account.
• Checkout iGoogle: This will replace your typical ‘Classic View’ Google search page.  It has all sorts of applets and widgets that you can configure based on your preferences.  Basically, tailoring the Google page to your own personal preferences.  Note: it may take a little longer to load the page than before, so you will have to judge if it’s worth it.
• Gotta Go Mobile: Google maps is really a more robust application than most other mapping software for your GPS-enabled smartphone.  Also, if you’re building your network of Gmail friends, you can configure Latitude to track whether any of them are in your general area at a given time.  It’s actually kind of cool.
• Register your blog (if you have one): with Google Blog Search, although that’s the one service that I have not gotten to work correctly yet for this blog!  If there’s anyone with suggestions out there, please let me know…

Google obviously dominates internet Search, and has for years, but they are really getting into cloud services surrounding personal productivity.  Even  more recently, hitting enterprise customers with some impressive results.  The best part is that (right now) all these services are free, and they are actively innovating these solutions.  Stay tuned for a post on Google Wave!

A quick heads-up; The next event under the SaaS network in IT Brancheforeningen (IT Association) is scheduled for thursday the 26th. Check out agenda etc. here. In an industry which is changing more rapidly than ever, I am really looking forward to these three speakers, and how they adjust to the new tomorrow. +60 people have signed up already, so it’s going to be a great SaaS day

CU There

This month saw the biggest ever UK lottery win of all time, a whopping £90Million pounds. We have all had those dreamy moments where we explore all the possibilities of life without the constraints of money. Exotic holidays, lavish homes, sports cars and all the finer things in life. Well unfortunately for most, this will continue to be just a dream, but it does raise an interesting thought.

As with most things in life, we are constrained by our circumstances or surroundings, yet we still have objectives and desired states. IT is no different.

Nearly every IT department out there has a desired state, and during these financially turbulent times, most are constrained by money and a finite amount of resource.

IT directors are looking for ways of providing reliable and consistent computing power to their end users and subsequently allowing end users to work in the most effecient way with customers and suppliers. Perhaps a slightly simplistic view, but ultimately true.

So what would IT look like in a FreeWorld? In a FreeWorld, IT directors, CIO’s and CTO’s could provide best of bread, state of the art technology to all users and help drive business productivity levels up with no constraints. IT departments could deploy applications and deliver services into the hands of it’s users in minutes or hours rather than weeks or months. IT growth can be dictated by use and not by the pennies in the bank. Service levels could be consistently achieved and end users can rely on thier technology with whole hearted confidence. Applications and services could be available round the clock without failure! Users could have a choice of protocols and methods to communicate with eachother, customers and suppliers in realtime. Users have the ability to collaborate on workloads and freely exchange information.

For most, this sort of desired state seems a million miles away, for some it is in operation in some shape or form. The point is, most IT departments are striving to achieve a desired state.

November also saw Servo unviel its new Hosting concept, “FreeWorld!”. A concept by which, through our Tier 3 enterprise class data centres, high speed resilient UK network and industry leading support and management services we can help make your desired state a realisty. Industry analysts  IDC, Gartner and Forrester point to hosting as the platform of choice for businesses as it provides a platform from where customers can:

• Reduce operational costs
• Provide scalable IT services
• Deploy new applications and services
• Give users 24/7 access to critical data and services
• Reduce energy consuptions and utiltiy bills
• Improve SLA’s
• Drive productivity in the business

Servo understand that hosting is not for everyone, but we are committed to helping you realise your desired state and working with you to achieve it with the your constraints.

For more information on Freeworld and our Cloud services, you can watch a short video:

FreeWorld Video

ODScommerce’s solutions and services are geared towards Small and Medium Businesses by understanding the challenges faced by these businesses and catering to them. By partnering with ODScommerce, clients would experience the following:

Flexible Solutions made to order

ODScommerce offers solutions that are customized and scaled to meet the needs of individual sourcing organizations, no matter where they are in their implementation of e- Sourcing.

ODScommerce combines a SaaS architecture platform with consulting services to provide a complete Knowledge Process solution for Small to Medium size businesses in sourcing and procurement. Customers may choose to utilize ODScommerce’s complete solution or incorporate a selection of services – such as Spend Analysis, Sourcing Management, or Contract Management – into their sourcing processes.

Each solution adapts to existing business models with procurement /sourcing processes, allowing companies to control the way they acquire goods and services. In as little as 24 hours, the configurable ODScommerce solution can be implemented and fully functional.

Flexible Deployment

In addition, ODScommerce’s OnDemandservices can be deployed in different ways that provide customers with the level of support they need and the control they desire such as self-serviced, managed and full-service.

Clients could also choose project services where ODScommerce provides professional consulting services for those customers looking to expand on the event services, move into an unexplored areas, or improve upon functionality that already exist in their organizations.

Furthermore, ODScommerce provides a compelling portfolio of Knowledge /Business Process Outsourcing Services that can be counted on to deliver value by a professional team that understands business drivers and what is necessary to bring clients to world class standards to compete in the global environment. These services are available with the ODScommerce solution as individual services or add-ons to the event services.

Read More Here!

By Bob Stein

Professional, reliable and easy to use Business Intelligence (BI) is essential to maintaining an edge and meeting financial performance objectives in the increasingly competitive convenience store retailing industry. The amount of change in the economy today, which can affect consumer confidence and behavior on an immediate basis, requires agile responses based on insights provided from valuable business data. Volatility in fuel prices, the stock market, retailer sales results and rising unemployment all make it necessary to be knowledgeable and dynamic in making decisions and changes in the business. To do so requires good data that is well organized and provides actionable insights: this is what Business Intelligence tools can do for retailers.

Characteristics of robust BI tools include the ability to efficiently compile data and report key performance indicators in an easy-to-understand visual/graphic “dashboard” that provides visual context of a company’s performance. For small and large retailers alike, BI offers an array of benefits that can improve a business owner’s decision making and increase profitability.

The “dashboard” interface of today’s BI solutions start with a daily snapshot of a convenience store operator’s business, placing data at its fingertips and allowing it to drill down from the dashboard to retrieve more details. Users can instantly compare today’s information against either budget or performance from previous months, quarters or years. Thus, the system gives store operators the tools needed to efficiently react to changing market conditions and make quick, competitive business decisions.

Users no longer have to spend countless hours sifting through multiple reports and data, because the BI software pulls all the available data as needed and consolidates information from various sources in different places, to immediately provide details about the business. BI quickly delivers information that in the past may have taken hours or even days to track down and compile.

The best business intelligence solutions identify both problems and opportunities for a convenience store business. BI can help retailers decide where to devote their resources and what operational trends they can exploit. The information helps users quickly respond to problem areas and improve store performance. Most importantly, the BI solution empowers convenience store operators to make decisions that can help affect their business in the most positive way, and ultimately gives them the data needed to gain a competitive advantage. The advent of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions means that even the smallest companies can obtain complete BI functionality and benefits.

Fortunately, even for small chains and single-store operators, access to quality BI is not out of reach. Traditionally, organizations had to either build or buy expensive systems to obtain BI power and knowledge. Today, Business Intelligence is no longer about massive, complex databases that require large staffs and larger IT budgets to maintain. Many tools can operate on small servers and interface with existing data warehouses to create decision support tools. This is inexpensive and fast.

With the SaaS model, the BI software and corresponding data are hosted by a technology vendor. Users, from independent retailers to large chains, pay a monthly subscription fee to access the power of BI — essentially renting the software and only paying for what they use.

Because users share the technology, vendor’s software and staff, this reduces upfront investments on servers and infrastructure, and eliminates the need for an IT staff to maintain and update the database. This does not mean, however, that a company’s information can be easily accessed and compromised. Advanced security features ensure complete confidentiality with this hosted model. The result is a BI solution — available today — that is faster, simpler, visually appealing, intuitive and best of all, more affordable than traditional solutions.

Hosted SaaS models not only benefit small retailers who lack the IT staff and resources to build, buy and support intricate BI software systems, but large organizations can also benefit by morphing their very complicated and involved systems into a much more simplified solution. The SaaS solutions available today make integrating BI into an organization very easy, regardless of size or budget.

With business more volatile and competitive than ever, BI is no longer a “nice to have,” it is now a necessary tool that enables retailers to stay at the forefront of their business by giving them access to the business data they need to make timely decisions and remain competitive. BI is a trend that is rapidly growing, and businesses today that don’t make use of it will be at an extreme disadvantage in a very short time.

The innovative, affordable BI tools available today are becoming more ubiquitous throughout the convenience store industry. These solutions are helping retailers of all sizes better understand their business and make optimal decisions that will ensure business success in the future and keep the convenience store industry healthy and prosperous.

Here’s a shot we did at the Fosforus studios yesterday for a project we’re working on for StarCite.

Earlier this year I wondered if online games developers suffered from the same 10:10 rule that plagued the online newspapers. (i.e. 10 times the traffic for 1/10 the revenues). Or was it only the online print publishers that suffer from the Analog Dollars = Digital Pennies problem?

To break even on the web you need to generate 100 times the traffic. That’s why when we say Analog Dollars = Digital Pennies it means exactly that. Today $1 of revenue offline translates into 1 cent in revenue online.

Console Games vs Online Games

As you can see I remapped the sales of the biggest selling retail console game titles and the traffic of the busiest online games sites into a single set of metrics. I discovered that the worst case scenario was around 30 times the traffic for 1/3rd the revenues which I guess translates pretty much into the 10:10 problem.

Then I had a look at the SaaS and SAM models for software vs traditional retail sales models and guess what? In the worst case scenarios the 10:10 pattern started to emerge. 10 times the users for 1/10th the revenues. 

So maybe the 10:10 problem was some kind of online Golden Mean? Maybe any media that goes online will suffer the same fate? Print goes online hits the 10:10 wall. Games go online and hit the 10:10 wall. Software goes online and hits the 10:10 wall. TV goes online…

So what is the answer, if any, to the problem?

The answer is to stop thinking of digital media as a product or a destination and start thinking of it as a hook or a signpost.

If you don’t understand what that means then follow my logic.

• All digital products can be freely replicated at no additional cost per copy.
• This means they have no value other than as a hook and should be freely distributed.
• This means that the online market will be (is?) awash in a sea of hooks.
• This means one of two things. Firstly all media is now advertising (i.e. a hook) and secondly the hook is only of value if you know what you want to catch and what you want them to buy from you when they are caught.

This is of course the theory of Freemium taken to its logical conclusion as a whole of market theory.

Freemium is what Electronic Arts has just invested in with its $400 Million buyout of Playfish. The same goes for the $260 Million valuation that investors have just put into Playdom. These two companies, along with Zynga, currently dominate the online gaming world within the social networking sites. 

They are using free games as a hook to attract massive online audiences. What’s the revenue model?  Primarily providing the audience with the opportunity to purchase gaming credits and associated game play “Bling” via mobile phone micropayments.

Between them these three companies may be generating as much as $300 million annually on sales of virtual goods.

For example: TechCrunch estimates Zynga’s revenues at $200 Million and their audience at 125 Million uniques. That’s roughly 1.25 times the revenues of the best-selling console game and 125 times the traffic. That’s approximately 100:1.

That sound just like Analog Dollars = Digital Pennies to me.

Postscript: Today Bloomberg announced that Zynga May Be Valued at $1 Billion on Facebook Craze. “That could make San Francisco-based Zynga the third-largest U.S. video-game publisher by market capitalization”

Bloomberg also reports that the current number 3 is the “New York-based Take-Two who had 2008 sales of $1.54 billion and has a market value of $909 million”. 

Now those figures equate to approximately 8 times the estimated 2009 revenues of Zynga. So I guess the future of online gaming is going provide lots of excitement for all the players in the game

Here’s a partially formed thought:  For any enterprise with an on-line product/service or for any enterprise that does business on-line (I think that’s pretty much all of them by now), a meaningful understanding of User-Product-Service Activity will very quickly (if not already) become a core value proposition.  Understanding what users & customers are doing, when & why; how is a product being used, when & why;    Two key words here are activity and enterprise.

Activity represents the component parts of behavior.

Activity tells you why, when, where and how your product or service is valuable to your customer.  It also tells you how your product or service is being used at a level of detail never before possible, enabling an understanding that allows you to improve your product and service relentlessly.  Therefore, it’s core to any iterative process as well.  Knowledge of activity and behavior provide an unfair advantage in understanding customer’s attitude and willingness to continue being a customer. It enables maximally relevant conversations between you and your customer about what matters…whatever that might be.

An “activity stream” is the essence of Twitter and a core feature of Facebook…however, these are consumer services and have a generic, spread-spectrum focus.  Twitter and Facebook mix the personal and professional, business and consumer, artistic, political, religious and everywhere in between. Furthermore, many social networking platforms are simply not viable within the enterprise today.

In any event, the concept worth exploring is an Enterprise Activity Stream and it’s implications for businesses going forward.  I believe salesforce.com is onto this concept to a certain extent with its future Chatter platform but we’re in the very early days.  The possibilities and implications here are pretty big…more on this soon….

Em conferência anual, companhia aponta para foco na integração entre redes sociais, ferramentas colaborativas e aplicativos corporativos 

É praticamente inevitável para uma companhia ignorar processos de colaboração, troca de ideias, redes sociais e outras funcionalidades que vieram com o apogeu da web 2.0, ainda que a empresa não tenha aplicado essa realidade ao seu dia a dia. A indústria assiste de perto a esta movimentação ávida para encontrar uma forma de ganhar sua fatia nessa chamada evolução social. E algumas têm conseguido algum sucesso. O Google tem capitalizado com sua plataforma Google Apps que, aos poucos, amplia presença no mercado empresarial e a Salesfoce.com, uma das pioneiras na oferta de programas no modelo software como serviço (SaaS, da sigla em inglês), mostra que está com os dois pés nesta era.

Prova dessa determinação é o lançamento do Salesforce Chatter, apresentado durante o Dreamforce 2009, conferência que a companhia realiza anualmente em São Francisco, Estados Unidos, cidade onde a empresa foi fundada, e que neste ano ocorre entre os dias 17 e 20 de novembro. Trata-se de uma espécie de Google Wave, mas totalmente voltado para o mundo das corporações. Como explica a própria empresa, o Chatter é, ao mesmo tempo, uma aplicação de colaboração corporativa e uma plataforma de desenvolvimento social. Por meio de uma interface aparentemente fácil, o funcionário pode acessar um aplicativo financeiro, observar dicas, criar fóruns, acessar redes sociais compartilhadas.

CEO da Salesforce diz que produtos das rivais são lentos ou complexos e caros 

De acordo com a companhia, os 135 mil aplicativos Salesforce se converterão para a plataforma social. Para Marc Benioff, CEO e chairman da empresa, o produto é uma forma de aproximar os funcionários da empresa, já que essas pessoas passam a acessar ferramentas que encontram fora da companhia e que podem contribuir com o processo de colaboração e inovação. É uma complexa combinação, em tempo real, de ferramentas de redes familiares e aplicativos empresariais dentro de um formato de compartilhamento seguro.

“Não conheço ninguém que discorde que Twitter e Facebook sejam fenômenos e trouxeram novas possibilidades para a indústria com meio bilhão de usuários. Eu uso Facebook e Twitter”, comentou Benioff, sobre a realidade das redes, diante de uma plateia formada por milhares de pessoas (foram 19 mil inscritos) entre analistas, clientes, jornalistas e desenvolvedores. “A mágica é levar a inteligência por meio da rede social. Une conteúdo, aplicativo e pessoas no mesmo espaço. Nas empresas, isso está separado. Por que não levar inteligência para as empresas? Você tem conteúdo por meio de compartilhamento de arquivo, intranet, Lotus Notes; tem aplicativo da Salesforce, Oracle, SAP e tem pessoas que utilizam e-mail, outlook e mensagem instantânea e porque não usar tudo isso junto?”, questionou o CEO da Salesforce.

De acordo com Benioff, a colaboração por meio do Chatter será tão fácil como ocorre no Facebook e os aplicativos “conversarão com o usuário”. Em relação à segurança e privacidade, ele esclareceu que a ferramenta traz funcionalidades que permitem determinar quem tem acesso à determinada apresentação que será compartilhada na rede, quais pessoas podem ingressar em um grupo recém criado. Os filtros funcionam inclusive para os aplicativos.

Logo após a apresentação que também marcou a abertura do evento, Benioff participou de um bate-papo com jornalistas. Ele explicou que a estratégia da companhia está, sobretudo, em criar produtos que possam ser integrados. Mas adiantou que, no caso do Chatter, “o primeiro passo é colocar o produto como a próxima geração de colaboração. Não é um software de rede social, é uma plataforma de colaboração e o segundo passo é diferenciar os produtos como CRM da plataforma de integração.”

Versões atualizadas
Além do lançamento do Chatter, a Salesforce.com apresentou versões atualizadas do Sales Cloud2 e Service Cloud2. Ambos produtos receberam ferramentas colaborativas e integração com redes sociais. Tudo para facilitar o trabalho, melhorar o desempenho das companhias e deixar tudo dentro do conceito integração e colaboração.

No caso do Service Cloud, Benioff avisou que se trata de uma nova geração de serviço ao cliente e apresentou um slide com dado creditado à Frost & Sullivan que, em 2009, a Salesforce terá 55% de market share em CRM no modelo SaaS. “Os contacts center estão desconectados e os clientes estão nas redes sociais. As empresas investem em SAP, Oracle e Microsoft, mas os clientes estão em outros lugares”, provocou o executivo.

O vice-presidente de marketing da companhia, Kraig Swensrud, mostrou que a Dell, por exemplo, adotou o CRM da Salesforce, já nesta nova era e lembrou que os usuários têm, na mesma tela, acesso a todos os canais como telefone, redes sociais, e-mail e site. “O sistema é totalmente integrado. Pode saber de onde e o que as pessoas estão falando. É possível fazer filtros por perfil de clientes ou produtos, por exemplo.”

By STEVE LOHR

A TOUR of its carefully tended, 300-acre corporate campus here leaves little doubt why surveys, year after year, rate the SAS Institute, the world’s largest private software company, among the best places to work.

There is the subsidized day care and preschool. There are the four company doctors and the dozen nurses who provide free primary care. The recreational amenities include basketball and racquetball courts, a swimming pool, exercise rooms and 40 miles of running and biking trails. There is a meditation garden, as well as on-site haircuts, manicures, and jewelry repair. Employees are encouraged to work 35-hour weeks.

Academics have studied the company’s benefit-enhanced corporate culture as a model for nurturing creativity and loyalty among engineers and other workers. Six years ago, in a report on “60 Minutes,” Morley Safer called working at SAS “the good life.”

But that good life is under threat today as never before. SAS’s specialty, a lucrative niche called business intelligence software, is becoming mainstream. Free, open-source alternatives to some of the company’s products are increasingly popular. On the other end of the spectrum, the heavyweights of the software industry — Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and, especially, I.B.M. — are plunging in and investing billions of dollars.

“It will be a dogfight,” says Bill Hostmann, an analyst at Gartner. “SAS has never faced a competitor like I.B.M. And I do think I.B.M. sees SAS as a big, fatted cow.”

The term “business intelligence software” applies to a wide range of products and services, but all the technology is aimed at helping businesses mine nuggets of insight from mountains of data. SAS has traditionally specialized in advanced software to analyze huge data sets and to generate predictive statistical models for large corporations and government agencies.

Credit card companies, for example, use SAS to detect unusual buying patterns in real time, and to spot potentially fraudulent charges. Giant retail chains use SAS to tailor pricing and product offerings down to the store level. Telecommunications companies use SAS to identify the few thousand customers, among millions, most likely to switch to another cellphone carrier, and to aim marketing at them. SAS software is also used to parse sensor signals from North Sea oil rigs, combined with weather and structural data, to predict failure of parts before it happens. Of the 100 largest companies worldwide, 92 use SAS software.

But as the stream of companies’ collected data turns into a torrent, SAS and other software companies are trying to find new ways to harness it. The information is generated not only by computerized systems for tracking operations, customers and sales. It also comes from new data sources like Web site visits, social network chatter and public records accessible over the Internet, as well as genome sequences, sensor signals and surveillance tapes, all in digital form.

This data explosion, experts say, is an untapped asset at most companies, which lack the tools and skills to exploit it. Yet the long-range potential, they say, is to use this data for far more fine-grained analysis of markets, customer behavior and operations, making business more of a science and less a seat-of-the-pants art.

“Now, the data is available so business can move toward evidence-based decision-making,” says Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the Center for Digital Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “This market is a huge opportunity.”

That opportunity is not lost on SAS. “Our advantage is the incredible depth of our technology, developed over years and applied to specific industries,” says James H. Goodnight, the chief executive and a co-founder of SAS. “No one can match our toolbox.”

Indeed, no one underestimates SAS’s technical prowess. The big question is whether the company’s seemingly pampered culture can embrace the higher-octane institutional metabolism that it will need to succeed.

“We know we have to change — no question about it,” says Jim Davis, 51, a senior vice president at SAS. “Our market space has changed dramatically in the last 18 months or so, more than at any time over the 33-year history of the company. We can’t sit back. Things are only going to get faster.”

THE company traces its roots to a time when computing was costly and for the few. Originally called Statistical Analysis System, it was founded in 1976 by Mr. Goodnight and three colleagues from the agricultural statistics department at North Carolina State University. Its techniques were initially used to calculate the intricacies of soil, weather, seed varieties and other factors to improve crop yields.

To build an audience, Mr. Goodnight spent nights packing up boxes of computer tapes and manuals, which he sent to university and corporate researchers. Soon, companies wanted him and his academic colleagues to develop software tools tailored for industry. In 1976 at a users’ conference, 300 or so people showed up, many from business.

“That was pretty much an ‘aha’ moment for us, that it was time to expand beyond the university,” Mr. Goodnight recalls. “It was a little scary, cutting the academic umbilical cord. But I was convinced we could do it.”

He and his colleagues at SAS developed their own programming language and software tools, and designed them for eggheads like themselves. Users were analysts with Ph.D.’s, working with programmers and employed by the largest companies at the forefront of using computing in their businesses, including banks, national retailers, insurers and drug companies.

SAS invested heavily in research and development, and even today allocates 22 percent of the company’s revenue to research. The formula has paid off in steady growth, year after year. Revenue reached $2.26 billion in 2008, up from $1.34 billion five years earlier.

Yet the company also faces the classic challenge of being the innovative pioneer — enjoying rich profit margins but facing new competition from rivals seeking to gain market share with lower prices and substitute technology.

In the last two years, the major software companies have scooped up companies in the business intelligence market. Among the larger moves, SAP bought Business Objects for $6.8 billion, I.B.M. bought Cognos for $4.9 billion and Oracle picked up Hyperion for $3.3 billion.

Still, those companies compete in the broad swath of the business intelligence market for reporting and analysis products. Such data on sales, shipments, customers and operations amount to a numbers-laden portrait of the recent past. The SAS stronghold is a more sophisticated kind of software typically called “advanced analytics and predictive modeling,” which uses historical and current data to try to peer into the future and model likely outcomes.

The competitive thrust that really grabbed SAS’s attention came in late July, when I.B.M. announced that it planned to pay $1.2 billion for SPSS, a maker of predictive modeling software. I.B.M. has placed SPSS and Cognos into a new business analytics and optimization group. That business will be supported by 200 scientists, and the company has said it will retrain or hire 4,000 consultants and analysts to work in the group.

“This is the big growth strategy for I.B.M., the company’s next big play for this decade,” says Ambuj Goyal, a computer scientist who is general manager of I.B.M’s business analytics software unit. “SAS comes from the legacy world of statisticians and programmers. The real opportunity is in deploying this technology broadly in corporations.”

To counter I.B.M. and others, SAS is looking to forge a tighter relationship with a big technology services company. It is also shortening product development cycles to 12 to 18 months, down from 24 to 36. “That’s what the market expects,” Mr. Davis says.

The most sweeping change is the company’s move toward the Internet model of software delivery — as a service that customers tap into over the Web, much as Google and other Internet companies do. SAS has dipped its toe in, with some initial products. But a major expansion is planned, supported by a sprawling $70 million data center scheduled to begin operating next year.

The remotely delivered software is part of a drive to broaden the market for SAS technology beyond an elite corps of quantitative analysts and into the rank-and-file of corporate professionals.

Analysts say the company’s strategy looks sound, even if the outcome is uncertain. “SAS has to do a lot of things right to succeed,” says Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president of research for Gartner. “But if it executes correctly, it could be a winner.”

ACROSS its campus here, there are signs that the SAS culture is evolving with the times. Rick Langston, 54, a senior software manager who joined the company 29 years ago, smiles and shrugs when asked about the 35-hour workweek. After leaving the office, Mr. Langston routinely checks on work e-mail at home.

These days, he explains, SAS is a global company with far-flung project teams, and overnight e-mails can resolve problems and speed things along. Deadline work to meet product development schedules, he adds, can mean long hours at times. “But this is certainly not a place where you are working 60-hour weeks, week in and week out,” he said.

To be sure, the corporate cocoon in Cary can breed insularity. SAS, for example, was slow to recognize the brewing challenge from free, open-source alternatives to some of its products. A free programming language and set of software tools for statistical computing, called R, has become increasingly popular at universities and labs.

The company shifted course earlier this year and modified its software so programs written with R work seamlessly with SAS technology. “Shame on us for not engaging more with the open-source community,” says Keith Collins, senior vice president and chief technology officer. “But we’re committed to doing that now.”

THE architect of the SAS culture is Mr. Goodnight, a lanky, laconic billionaire. The benefits have built up gradually over the years as a series of pragmatic steps, he says. The day-care program began after a valued employee was about to leave to take care of her young child. The on-site medical checkups grow out of the belief that “good health is good business,” he says.

Today, SAS estimates that its health care center saves the company $5 million a year, by providing care more cheaply than an outside insurer and by not having employees leave the campus for doctor’s visits. Employee turnover at SAS averages 4 percent a year, versus about 20 percent for the overall software industry.

The office atmosphere is sedate. There are no dogs roaming the halls, no Nerf-ball fights, no one jumping on trampolines — no whiff of Silicon Valley. The SAS culture is engineered for its own logic: to reduce distractions and stress, and thus foster creativity.

“The SAS model is sensible and durable; there’s nothing faddish or ephemeral,” says Richard Florida, a professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, who has studied SAS and is the author of “The Rise of the Creative Class.”

During the technology boom at the start of this decade, SAS considered a drastic change in its model: going public. Goldman Sachs bankers were brought in as advisers, and in 2000 SAS recruited a former Oracle executive, Andre Boisvert, as its president.

Under Mr. Boisvert, SAS installed a new financial reporting system and paid the sales force incentive commissions rather than salary only. But when technology stocks plummeted, the appeal of selling shares to the public also receded. Mr. Boisvert resigned from SAS in 2001 and is now an independent investor and consultant.

Mr. Goodnight recalls those days as a brief period of New Economy surrealism, and going public as a path wisely avoided. SAS, he says, is a culture averse to the short-term pressures of Wall Street, which he characterizes as “a bunch of 28-year-olds, hunched over spreadsheets, trying to tell you how to run your business.”

Unlike many other tech companies, SAS has had no recession-related layoffs this year. “I’ve got a two-year pipeline of projects in R & D,” Mr. Goodnight says. “Why would I lay anyone off?”

Mr. Goodnight, though 66, has no plans to retire himself. His fingerprints, colleagues say, remain all over the business, especially in meeting with customers and in overseeing research.

He is not only a statistician, but also a bit of gambler who enjoys calculating his chances. For example, he is co-author of a paper that simulated millions of possible outcomes in blackjack.

Mr. Goodnight regards his new rivals the way a confident card player might. He likes the odds, and he likes his hand.

“We’re pushing as fast as we can to stay ahead — on the cutting edge of everything,” he says. “We’ll do fine.”

One of our products currently in development has recently kicked off its pre-launch campaign and the response is quite encouraging.

FaxHQ’s objective to solve the problems with fax and specifically fax2email. Visit the site for some more tidbits

As most of you are aware, last week Salesforce.com held its DreamForce 2009 Cloud Computing event.  Unfortunately, I had a conflict with an ITIL course and was unable to attend what is arguably one of the most important Cloud Computing events of the year.  However, I did have the pleasure of speaking briefly with Mr. Ryan Howard, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Practice Fusion.

For those of you who may not be aware, Practice Fusion is a free, SaaS based EHR service provider founded in 2005 by Mr. Howard, based out of San Francisco.  In addition to the current services it provides in the areas of medical billing, scheduling and patient record management, the latest key updates to their service, according to Mr. Howard, include lab integration (Quest Diagnostics) and eprescribing capabilities.

One of the interesting aspects of Practice Fusion aside from Salesforce.com’s investment in the company, and their SaaS based model enabled by Force.com, is the potential future direction for collaborative capabilities by patients with their new Patient Health Record application.

Similar to Google Health in that you can store and manage all your medical information in one place to collaborate with others (which may share your medical condition), though with Practice Fusion that collaboration can include your medical provider in a seamless manner.

It’s interesting to note that while EHR systems are not new, their implementation can cost millions of dollars, not to mention the necessary ongoing operational expenditures and staff to support and maintain such systems.  Which is why historically, the implementation of an EHR system was largely limited to organizations with deep pockets.  All of that becomes a non-issue for physicians with their own medical practices in this new SaaS based model.

For me, one of the fascinating areas of this business model is the new level of complexity in collaboration, no longer simply limited to doctor and patient, but more patient control in who they share their information with, to provide support in the resolution of their condition.  From a business model and service strategy perspective, I think the company is right on target.

Given the continued efforts to expand the use of EMR applications as a way of lowering healthcare costs, and the ARRA stimulus bill’s focus on encouraging physicians to adopt electronic medical record applications; when coupled with Practice Fusion’s continued innovation in this area, and Salesforce.com’s support, all but virtually guarantees a pathway to growth for the company in the years to come.

-Tune The Future-

I would like to share with everyone a piece of Cool Life Systems new work.  Recently, we relaunched the website for Financial Consulting Group website in addition to providing the organization a new back office system and a member and organization management system.  Financial Consulting Group, also known as FCG, is the largest organization of independently owned accounting, business valuation, and financial services firms in North America.

Cool Life Systems is responsible for the revised look, feel and functionality of FCG’s new website as well the technology that runs behind the scenes which includes member and event management, marketing systems and the exclusive FCG member extranet. The new extranet system will offer FCG members a better way to request assistance on engagements, learn to use resources, and post questions and receive answers from other FCG members.

FCG only showcases a portion of the technology and services we offer to our client base every day.  So go ahead, take a look around our website look at some of our work and let us know what you think.  This blog regularly points out shortcoming that we see in the small to mid size business segment whether it is data management, sales and marketing efforts, or organization management.   The shortcomings pointed out are all too often easily corrected, and unabashedly can be easily corrected with use of the Cool Life Systems product.  We look forward to speaking with you soon.

オフィス・ワーカーの多くは、新たな仕事にありつくためならば
会社の機密情報を無断で持ち出す意思がある。
データ・セキュリティ企業の米国Cyber-Ark Softwareが行った意識調査で、
そうした実態が明らかになりました。

この調査は、ニューヨーク・シティとロンドンで、
それぞれ300人のオフィス・ワーカーを対象に行われたものです。

ニューヨーク・シティでの調査によると、
会社の機密情報を無断で持ち出す行為について、
85％の回答者がその違法性を認識していたとの事です。

しかしながら、「新たな職を得るために、
実際に会社の機密情報を持ち出したことがある」
という回答者は41％にも上ったといいます。
同様に、友人や家族の就職に役立つのであれば、「
持ち出した会社の機密情報を渡してもよい」
と考える回答者も26％に及んだそうです。

ちなみに、データの無断持ち出しに最も多く利用されたメディアは、
USBフラッシュ・ドライブだそうです。

一方、ロンドンでの調査でも同様の結果が現れています。
「解雇されたら会社の情報を持ち出す」と答えた人は26％、
「解雇される可能性があるとの噂を聞いたら情報を持ち出す」
と答えた人は24％でした。

「情報を持ち出す」とした人のうち、28％が「新たな役職を得るための交渉カードとして、
その情報を利用する」とし、「新しい仕事の中でその情報を活用するつもりだ」
とした回答者も28％に上りました。
持ち出す情報の内容は、「取引先／顧客の連絡先リスト」が23％、
「パスワード」が11％となっているそうです。

弊社では企業内にある機密情報持ち出しを防ぐSaaS型の
コンテンツ管理サービスを展開しております。
詳しくは弊社ホームページをご覧下さい。

We often tell our customers we don’t sell software.   And in fact we don’t.  We sell, or rather we lease, a service.  Compliantia is a hosted and fully managed web-based service like salesforce.com or Google Apps.  This new computing paradigm is aptly named “Software As as Service” (SaaS) and is rapidly gaining grounds in the enterprise.  But what exactly are the benefits of using a service?

1. We manage the infrastructure.  With Compliantia, there is no server to procure and maintain,  no software to download, no patches.  The software is web-based, entirely managed by us (on a worldwide secure computing cloud infrastructure) and always up to date.   This creates significant savings for strained IT departments.  It also allows us to cut our time to market from weeks and months to just days.

2. No expensive software license to purchase, install and maintain.   Commercial grade software is, as a general rule, very expensive to procure and maintain.  Customers are expected to pay for a software license ($100,000 or more),  consulting cycles for integration ($1,500 per diem for weeks/months of consulting work) and again for a maintenance contract ($50,000 a year or more) for the life of the product.  A service is billed differently.  No upfront costs, no software license.  A nominal fee for integration (typically a fraction of a software project’s cost of integration) and a monthly, “all in” service charge.

3. We make low-risk pilots possible.  Billing our offering as a service allows our customers to effectively “try before they buy”, and do this for a nominal cost.  This is again a departure from the software norm.  A typical software vendor needs to convince you his/her software is going to transform your operations, has enormous ROI and negligible costs.  Vendors to this because they expect you to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars “upfront”.  We don’t. In fact we encourage customers to run pilots, get comfortable with the product on a small set of stores, configure it to their needs and determine ROI on their accord.    This means our service needs to impress and demonstrate value in actual usage, not just in the boardroom.  Demo-ware be gone, try before you buy.

In summary, Compliantia’s service model is low-risk and low cost and allows our customers to focus on what they do best: running their business.   Thanks for reading.

Our Supply Chain Management Application will boost your efficiency in Acquiring, Managing and Selling your inventory by enabling you to better manage your logistics and order fulfillment processes. Visit Less Software For Supply Chain Management Software

Before we break away for the Thanksgiving Holiday – I wanted to post an article concerning B2B marketing and the importance of having the neccessary tools in place to manage, track and engage clients, referral channels, and leads.

In today’s world of B2B marketing there are multiple channels used to for audience development, client retention and referral channel development.  These channels typically include the use of various media segments such as:

• eMail (both one to one and one to many)
• Newsletters
• Live In Person events, such as seminars and conferences
• Webinars (both live and recorded)
• Print Media

If this communication is to be effective, the sender must deploy a message of perceived value to a targeted/segmented audience that may or may not include some form of tangible takeaway benefit besides the initial content. For example, offering a free 1 hour online marketing seminar to CPA’s and accounting professionals for referral channel development that is delivered by a marketing expert from a Fortune 100 company and you should expect a 10% participation rate.  If you a add a tangible takeaway benefit to the seminar such as including 2 free CPE credits, your participation rate will increase to 20% or higher.  And your goal for the seminar?  Develop referral channels for your product.  This same scenario can be applied to consumers and businesses alike.

On the surface the above scenario appears to be a relatively benign process. You setup a conference and invite a bunch of people to attend and hope for the best.  However, if you break down the process there is a lot of administrative/organization work involved to achieve your goals.

1. Development, distribution and promotion of event via email and print,
2. Tracking results of that distribution,
3. Event registration and tracking of event registration,
4. Tieback of yes/no responses to database records,
5. Results of seminar; comments from participants, generation of referrals?

In addition to the above:

1. What the event promoted to the correct segment?
2. Did you record who did and did not respond to the event and showed up?
3. Did the attendees refer a client?
4. How does any of this tie into your contact management system? If at all?

The real question is do you have a system in place to perform this type of marketing and event management without a lot of manual interaction?  And does your ’system’  integrate with your contact management system?

In today’s world a professional services firm requires a system to distribute content to all market segments.  The result of the distribution need to be trackable, reportable and return definable measurable benefits to acquire valid ROI costs.  Systems like those developed by Cool Life Systems allow firms to perform this functions for creation and distribution of content, tracking the success of each distribution, and providing tools for follow up with persons in each identified channel.  These tools work together to allow you and your firm to increase competitive market share, achieve market differentiation from competitors and influence audience segments for a desired outcome.

On Thurs 19/11, BigG released Google Chromium Source code to community while hosting an announcement/demo event.

Parallerly some high level architectural description has been as well released and the greater focus has been undubtably put to security concepts and browser role.

The leading concepts that inspired Google when conceiving Chrome Os leaves little open to the discussion and starts from  the overall assumption that Chrome Os will be something new and, radically, different.

The approach of realizing something so new and push it so aggressively on the market can be considered fool (if you think how different will this be from any former commercial OS existing) or, at least,  very ambitious.

Consciously enough, Big G embraced the open source model to develop this assett even if the whole licensing policy it’s not so clear, at least to me, up to now (anyway, it should be a mix of GPL for Linux kernel derivative/mixed part such as the window manager and BSD, as formerly adopted for Chrome).

The experience matured with Android demonstrated Google that commoditizing the OS and reducing BOM is the main road to create a special feeling with hardware vendors and ensure radical penetration of the OS in hardware vendors roadmaps (for those non deeply inside the mobile market, expect a 2010 full of Robots outside).

But, at the end, given that is also very well backed in terms of investments and market strategy, will it become “the new thing” as expected by much?

Chrome OS introduces lots of radical technology changes as well as some cultural ones. The fact that Chrome Os is actually a commodity to users and vendors, leaves, as said, Big G a big design freedom that, eventually, will transform the user in what really was meant to be from the start.

In fact, if the high level suggestions will be confirmed, you’ll no more be able to completely admin your computer (that is no more a “personal” physical thing): it’s actually Google, to ensure that your security and the compelling performances promised are granted, controlling the machine that runs your “personal session“. User and applications will be sandboxed, updates will be forced and signed (trusted) where considered radically needed.

To do this, Google will follow a streamlined paradigm that has been embraced, if not invented, by Apple for the iPhone: controlling what runs on your machine with certified apps (only one in case of Chrome Os actually, the browser) will grant security and performance requirements.

If they will succeed to create a convincing new user experience there’s a big chance that Chrome Os, as happened to iPhone os, will be a substantial success.

At one point, the question:

“will user give up desktop applications?”

is, IMHO, quiet old fashioned by itself. I mean, who’s a user? we have plenty of users neither knowing what a “desktop application” is! …the parallel to iPhone is back again: most of the iPhone users bought this as the first smartphone in their life and discovered the “mobile connected life” just thanks to buying  an iPhone for it’s status symbol appeal.

Many people only use a browser all day (e.g terminal operators); sometimes they also use an office automation suite (already migrated to good web implementation); few of us use the so called “desktop apps” for two main use cases:

• computing intensive operations, typical to a workstation user
• apps needing to access device hardware

While for the first topic grid\nw computing solutions are well trained (think to Citrix Xen), the second one is one of the key innovation points expected to be improved by Google Chrome OS itself being also a potential reason of instability.

Transforming Chrome OS from a niche product to the new standard will be a hard but not impossible move, depending on how much of the entire technology megatrends have been intercepted by Google product thinkers.

In case they’ll succeed this will be probably fatal to a huge number of the “old world” technologies. We’ll forget Java and interpreted languages on clients;  untrusted computing will be outdated as well in favour of sandboxing; distributed peer to peer systems as we know it  will probably disappear  (maybe I’m a bit radical on this) thanks to the central role of networks resident data.

The process of shifting user ownership from the piece of metal (personal computer) to the  sensible data and computing sessions (personal computing) will eventually get onto subsidizing the Hardware via ads: is data lock in being important to Google, they’re open to pay you a pc in change of hosting your data.

Do you trust them?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/ / CC BY 2.0

Really Simple Systems has appointed a distributor for Africa, AdvanceNet, based in South Africa. More details on the Really Simple Systems blog and in their press release.

I went and visited AdvanceNet a few months ago, met the people there and many customers/prospects. Three things struck me as different there from other market places:

• At a seminar to discuss SaaS, I asked the audience “How many of you are familar with the term Cloud Computing?”. Only one person stuck their hand up, and they had just heard of the term from the agenda of my talk
• Simplicity is really important. African companies employ staff with a wide range of IT experience, from highly skilled to people with very little exposure to computers at all
• Bandwidth is a really issue. Internet connectivity is expensive, paid for by the Gb, and not that fast. Systems that have latency and use AJAX just die a death.

But the future for SaaS in Africa looks good, as the combination of price and ease of use/implementation is as attractive there as everywhere else, if not more so.

COMPUTERWORLD

Empresas com foco em mercados específicos lançam ofertas e campanhas agressivas para concorrer com os maiores nomes do mercado, como SAP, Oracle e IBM.

A Infor, empresa especializada em softwares corporativos, lançou uma campanha para promover seu ERP com o título “Abaixo o grande ERP”. Sem citar nomes de fornecedores, a companhia alega que seus concorrentes apresentam custo total de propriedade mais alto por conta do maior tempo de implementação e pela necessidade de customizações mais intensas.

Embora não afirme quem são os principais concorrentes, fica claro que Oracle e SAP estão na mira da campanha. A meta da empresa é avançar com mais força no mercado de ERP do que as gigantes, por ter um número maior de soluções, cada uma focada para necessidades específicas. Na ponta, teriam tempo curto de implantação, menos trabalho de personalização e, em consequência, maior ganho financeiro.

A campanha da Infor chegará ao Brasil a partir do ano que vem, com foco no segmento das médias empresas. “Os grandes ERPs não conseguem atingir esse público devidamente, embora tenham o discurso de que a solução serve para todo mundo”, afirma o presidente mundial da Infor, Greg Corgan. “Mas nossa ferramenta tem aderência também entre as grandes e brigaremos por elas”.

Quem também briga com as grandes empresas é a Informatica Corporation, mas aposta em um mercado específico, que apresenta forte tendência de crescimento, segundo as principais consultorias: o de integração de dados.

“Ser uma empresa focada em um mercado específico nos dá vantagem competitiva. E é por meio deste mercado que vamos procurar crescer. Foi o que fez a IBM com o mainframe, a Microsoft com o sistema operacional e a Oracle com o banco de dados”, afirma o diretor técnico da Informatica, Delmar Assis.
A empresa pretende reforçar sua posição com o lançamento do produto de integração Informatica 9 que, segundo Assis, possui uma ênfase maior para o departamento de negócios.

A penetração da solução de integração de soluções segue em uma dinâmica diferente em relação à Infor. Ela não necessariamente bate de frente com os ERPs e outras ferramentas de dados dos grandes fornecedores, mas em grande parte das vezes é complementar. A vantagem é que a solução é independente de plataformas, o que melhora a competitividade contra grandes fornecedores com soluções semelhantes.

De acordo com Pedro Bicudo, analista da consultoria TGT Consult, essa dinâmica no setor de tecnologia difere de outros mercados. Enquanto a consolidação ocorre em cima de commodities, há espaço para fornecedores focados em inovação e em novos serviços. “Áreas como gerenciamento de serviços web, redes sociais, cloud computing, sistemas de testes, entre outros, abrem espaço para o crescimento de fornecedores com foco”, afirma. Com os novos segmentos e a agressividade das estratégias das empresas média/grandes, não há conforto para os fornecedores de dezenas de bilhões de dólares.

Have you ever used a cloud computing service?

Many of you may give a negative answer to this question but in reality if you have ever searched the web using a search engine like Google, you would have used cloud computing service. The search engine takes a set of search terms from you, searches its index of web pages, and returns a list of matches as the search result. The process, which is essentially a piece of software, runs on one or more computers connected to the internet cloud somewhere in the world – you as a user have no idea where it is. This is the essence of cloud computing; one will be able to use a piece of software productively but not know the physical machine that is actually running it.

As you can see cloud computing has been around for more than a decade. Lately, cloud computing services are receiving lot of attention primarily because of advancement of technology in two specific categories:

1. Parallelization: The ability to split a software task across many machines and seamlessly add or remove machines from the task
2. Virtualization: The ability to split one physical machine into multiple virtual machines and ensuring that they run independent of each other

These technologies allow the cloud computing service providers leverage economy of scale and more efficient use of server hardware thereby providing more value for money.

Cloud computing also provides a neat solution to two major hurdles faced by an emerging entrepreneur:

• In the case when an emerging enterprise is small, it may still require access to complex IT solutions to run efficiently. Such solutions are normally very expensive and can only be cost effective for very large enterprises. However, cloud service providers can offer such solutions in shared mode thereby significantly reducing the cost of ownership through a model of pay per usage and not ownership.
• Emerging enterprises that have IT systems as the backbone of their core offering, will always have the dilemma on how much to invest on IT infrastructure. If they invest too little scalability may be a future issue whereas Investing too much upfront may have negative impact on the cash flow and even jeopardize the viability of the venture. With cloud computing it becomes easy to start small and seamlessly grow as much as necessary.

Cloud computing services can be offered in different flavors. Here are the 3 main categories:

A point to note: A cloud is not a solution to all problems nor is it useless technology and it will take a couple of years to mature.