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Saturday, December 31, 2005Online Intersections With Traditional Media USA Today ran a story about U.S. music album sales. Get this: 2005 album sales were down 7% from the previous year while digital downloads of music doubled! U.S. album sales were down about 7% as 2005 drew to a close, but the budding market for music downloads, which more than doubled over last year, helped narrow the revenue gap. The article goes on to note that this isn’t particularly bad news for recording companies, but “it doesn’t bode well for music retailers.” Combined, album and singles sales fell about 8% over the same time last year. More than 95% of music is sold in CD format. Downloaded tracks from online retailers soared to 332.7 million this year, compared with 134.2 million in 2004, an increase of 148%. Download sales increased by 350% over the prior year. Michael Hyatt predicts, a big enough slice of the book reading public will opt for digital delivery and that will have a significant, disruptive effect on the entire industry. As he sees it, 5-10 percent reduction in sales would wreak havoc. It’s already happening with newspapers and magazines. On the other hand, publishing companies that anticipate this shift and prepare accordingly will prosper.He is spot on when he sees that when technology shifts happen – quality does not matter beyond a certain level - The quality of MP3 files is not as good as the quality of CD tracks. Yet, customers are switching in unprecedented numbers. The trend of having 10,000 songs at your fingertips in a device that can fit in your pocket is intoxicating—at least to millions of people. Category : Emerging Trends, Disruptive Technologies, Online Strategies | Steve McConnell : Good Read Steve McConnell is one of my all time favourites – in fact he distills rich experience into very well articulated set of advise – I keep telling all software developers that all Steve McConnell’s writings are a must read – I think that he has the right flavour and mix in discussing various software engineering concepts – all embellished in simple, direct and practical terms. So when I came across the online version of his classic mistakes enumerated, I can not resist making mention about it here. Here are some types of the 36 classic mistakes that McConnell describes in detail: Category :Favourites | Web 2.0 : Time For A Reality CheckWeb 2.0 is clearly getting disproportionate coverage in the blogosphere. Web2.0 share in the real world as delivering value to business and society is indeed limited - if we look at the enterprise software – they directly are responsible for making the business machines hum and improve- be it airline scheduling, dispatching crude oil or treasury management or powering the stock exchanges of the world. Mike Arrington lists out a set of Web 2.0 applications that he sees as quite essential – the list has within it - some well known names – Technorati,FeedBurner, Bloglines, Flickr, Memeorandum, del.icio.us, skype & WordPress etc. The enthusiasm and the excitement shown for Web 2.0 apps amazes me – as these defy long held priniciples of wisdom. Its high time that these so called Web 2.0 companies are examined from the first principles viz. Business models – merely becoming attractive to be bought over by Yahoo’s & Google’s of the world would not be sufficient. If you see closely even the valuations of bought out firms have been very moderate.No doubt advances in technology to develop and distributed services off the web is an important landmark – most of Web 2.0 apps germinate out of this. The reigning mantra seems to be - "build it first and figure out how to attract visitors – they will anyway come” business model – the underpinning hope is that once a critical mass of visitors are achieved, revenues can always be generated. AdSense funds the operational cost of several web 2.0 enterprises. Surely not the way to build a scalable & enduring business . I sort of agree with the view web 2.0 lacks meaning & magic. I am fine with already established players like Amazon & Google getting web2.0 tagged – am also fine with finding a productive niche to thrive in the information value chain. Moving forward like in the e-business space, we need to have the wisdom and mechanisms for cross-integrating/leveraging web 2.0 applications for larger benefits – this calls for standards in development , build & integration blocks – all this would come only out of a solid base of web 2.0 apps that get built beneath – truly a tall order given the fragile nature of several web2.0 entities. We can definitely see a petering out of the web 2.0 momentum as we see it now and several entities would disappear – but one hope is that out of this something robust and strong might emerge – but we have cut through the hype. Category :Web 2.0, Emerging Trends, Emerging Technologies | Offshoring IT Services : Signals Getting Stronger Ronna Abramson finds that an increasingly huge pool of global demand makes it a good bet for India's top IT outsourcing firms to outrun their larger rivals in 2006. The year ending Mar 2006 will mark a milestone for Indian offshore outsourcing firms - Infosys and Wipro, as their revenue crosses the $2 billion mark. Satyam has already crossed the billion dollar run rate this year. Friday, December 30, 2005The Fortune 500 Blogging IndexChris Anderson writes about a wiki created collaboratively developed together by between Socialtext & Wired magazine that tracks which of the Fortune 500 is blogging. The list finds that only 3% of the F500 are doing so. Microsoft blogs, and Apple doesn't. Sun blogs and Intel doesn't. GM blogs and Toyota doesn't. In a meeting with Doc.Searls the question arose and Chris writes in the eyes of Doc - the risks and uncertainties of public business blogging are so great that big companies only do it under duress, when their traditional corporate messaging has lost traction. So companies on the way up don't want to mess with their success by introducing a new lens on the enterprise that isn't controlled by the PR department. But companies on the way down are willing to try anything to regain the confidence of their customers.This site has a list of F500 companies with blogs – both internal and external are listed here. The NewPRwiki also has a list of CEO blogs. This spreadsheet lists the Fortune 500 blogs & he finds that the average trailing 12-month share performance of the blogging members was +5.7%, while the non-blogging members was +19%. A commendable effort in compiling the list. This Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wikiis created to expand the list. Somehow I could not find in the excel sheet - noteworthy IBM blogs from the likes of Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Amy Wohl, Grady Booch and countless others from the IBM stable.what may be seen as extending things too far, Chris says the idea is to make the list robust enough to create a business blogging index!!! Category :Blogs, Emerging Trends | Morgan Stanley on Outlook for India -2006While it is fashionable to be bullish about the growth of Key countries in Asia, Morgan Stanley takes a cautious view about the outlook for India in 2006. An acceleration in GDP growth over the last two years to 7% pa has been one of the key factors focusing investors’ attention on India. Although we have been positive on India’s long-term growth outlook, we believe that the recent acceleration in growth was driven largely by cyclical external stimulus. Given that these favourable global factors now appear to be reversing, we believe India will face a pullback over the next 12 months in the form of a slowdown in growth and tightening liquidity conditions. A large part of the recent growth in industrial production and to a lesser extent services sector growth has been driven by cyclical global factors. This strong global liquidity spillover into India has allowed the government to pursue relatively loose monetary and fiscal policy, pushing domestic consumption growth to a new high. Acceleration in consumption growth has largely been driven by a rise in borrowing rather than income growth. India’s share of goods exports to the US has not seen any significant improvement over the past two years, and therefore most of the acceleration in India’s export growth appears to be largely a reflection of the demand cycle - this is important as asian economies are in general dependent on exports to US.The report also says china is about to suffer from an export fatigue. Although the Indian economy continues to benefit from relatively low global interest rates and stronger global GDP growth, the government has cushioned the economy from the attendant cost of higher oil prices. Category :India, 2006 Outlook | Enterprise Predictions for 2006 These are the comments that I posted in Vinnie’s site upon seeing his 2006 enterprise software predictions. In general, buyers are more cautious and would not easily get sucked in vendor speak – lot more detailed evaluations and price negotiations, clarifications can be expected – the average sales cycle may also increase for enterprise players – not shorten as expected due to consolidation effects. Category :Tech Predictions 2006 | Alaska Airlines #536 - Anxious MomentsJeremy Hermanns, a passenger in the Alaska airlines flight bound for Burbank, and a GA-VFR pilot, writes about the Alaska Airlines cabin depressurization and panic at 30000 feet. Seattlepi reports that an aviation expert finds that the jet was probably struck by a baggage cart while at Sea-Tac and the incident was not reported before the plane took off for Burbank. The damaged area of the plane would have been weakened by the ramp incident and the aluminum skin then likely ruptured once the jet neared its cruising altitude. All this happened due to a non-unionised member probably damaging the fuselage!. Oh God.. Now I realize how valuable the words - "travel safely" and "happy landing" means. I did not see any press release in Alaska airlines website on this incident. Look at the saftey numbers and also this impressive document on safety fromBoeing.Also good to know that no one was injured in this - aviation safety, is in many ways an important driver for global economic engine to keep humming - the more and more that we can make it safe - all the more better. Category :Aviation Safety | Thursday, December 29, 2005Microsoft : Looming Challenges AheadWhile some beleive that Micosoft shall have a good year ahead, Ray Ozzie's perspective about what microsoft could be doing in the year ahead - there are some important area where Microsoft's progress shall be monitored in the coming year.This list provides a good summary of key themes that Microsoft needs to go after in the new year.Besides taking Vista to the boardroom- microsoft needs refresh its online strategy. Itslatest online strategy is to match Google’s every move in hopes of raking in more advertising dollars, while taking yet another stab at subscription services. 2005 saw a lot of motion—leaked memos, blog buzz, reorgs, and a new "Live" brand—but little progress in terms of service improvements, audience share, or dollars. I agree that Microsoft’s online strategy must start to gel in 2006, or the company will find Google continuing to steal headlines and rake in the advertising bucks—or worse, building online services that begin to compete with Microsoft's core software franchises. Category :Microsoft | Korea & ConvergenceJapan and Korea have always been the trendsetters in the mobile and convergence segments. Korea'sbroadband advances are amongst the most recognised about the nation. Courtesy of Smartmobs saw this assessment of the status of convergence in the Korean market. I had been to Korea several times and in many ways associated with several developments there – and it is interesting to note that indeed the telecom market was dominated by Category :Convergence, Korea | The Rise Of KPOSeveral months back I wrote,Every form of digital data – creation, transformation and reporting is up for grabs in the offshoring world. Eric Keller was indeed right when he wrote, took Japan more than 30 years to obtain a strong position in key U.S. industries, such as Automotive and Consumer Electronics and that It will take half as long for India to do the same for service-oriented industries with IT leading the charge. Britton now writes, "Get Ready for Knowledge Process Outsourcing". As he sees it, the next wave of offshore outsourcing will revolve around high-end knowledge work. It may also have important implications for companies engaged in customer analysis and intelligence initiatives. Category :Knowledge Process Outsourcing | Wednesday, December 28, 2005Portals To Choose Insurance AdvisorsWe have so far seen chat being used interactively for customer services - online customer interaction has never really gone beyond in a sustained way.Just as internet banking empowered customers online shopping experience, Insurance companies are trying to innovatively make use of the internet and collaborative platforms to provide better interaction experience with the customers. ING Vysya Life has borrowed the blogging concept to provide an online presence to its top insurance advisors who can use the portal to increase their strike rate for converting their business from a larger number of potential customers. The platform provides the prospective customers the facility to select from the 27 advisors in six cities featured on its Web site and interact with them to get comprehensive information on insurance products. The interactive service will not eliminate personal meeting to clinch the subscription but is aimed at helping in sharper advisory capabilities to target the right products to the right customers. ING maintains that this service could be scaled up globally if found successful. . This is quite noteworthy. I would typically like to see the kind of tracking that the fedex uses to trace status - ideally service companies should be in a position to track and expose progress of the movement within the department to let stakeholders know about the progress. This should happen eventually. |Paul Graham On Time Management & Procrastrination Several people ask me repeatedly , how I manage things amidst so much of travel. I do not know whether I am all that good in managing things in time – most of my friends think that I can do better!! However I see some colleagues who do much better on this front – with so much travel they accomplish a lot more.Time management doesn't begin with managing time, it begins with finding our own individual purpose, establishing our mission, and setting our goals to achieve that mission. Paul Graham, points out that there are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That last type, is good procrastination. Type-C procrastinators - put off working on small stuff to work on big stuff. Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work. The mildest seeming people, if they want to do real work, all have a certain degree of ruthlessness when it comes to avoiding errands. The reason it pays to put off even those errands is that real work needs two things errands don't: big chunks of time, and the right mood. If inspired by some project, it can be a net win to blow off everything else to work on this for the next few days to work on it. Yes, those errands may cost more time when you finally get around to them. But if a lot get done during those few days, you will be net more productive. In fact, it may not be a difference in degree, but a difference in kind. There may be types of work that can only be done in long, uninterrupted stretches, when inspiration hits, rather than dutifully in scheduled little slices. Conversely, forcing someone to perform errands synchronously is bound to limit their productivity. The cost of an interruption is not just the time it takes, but that it breaks the time on either side in half. Years back Steven covey’s book First things first defined a minor framework – to classify criticality of time management Category :Time Management ,Life Trends | 2005 : The Year Of Google As the year comes to an end - amongst several enterprises that made news for the moves made - Google stands out - one gets a felling as if the year thats about to end should be christened THE YEAR OF GOOGLE.The Google of yesterday is different from the Google of today and with several new initiatives like this – and moreover there are several initiatives - some known, most unknown, the Google of tomorrow looks more interesting. Some see google as privacy time bomb, some see it as an evil and some hold even more radical views about Google. This post captures all the Category :Google, Emerging Trends | Mark Fletcher, Bloglines & Blogworld Mark Fletcher,who earlier wrote about his experience in starting Bloglines – one of the most notable success in the blogworld – real startup, garage mindset & launched with the philosophy to keep things simple but allow for scaleup is indeed a phenomenon in the blogosphere. His presentation on bloglines startup experience is a must read for all those interested in entrepreneurism and the evolution of the blogosphere. Mark and Bloglines are clrear trendsetters and consistent winners - even after Askjeeves acquisition,it is really an achievement of sorts to have retained the old look and feel and maintain the same user experience . Mark writes about his experience in moving bloglines infrastructure recently – aimed at moving the Bloglines service to the main Ask facility, as it would be easier for operations, it would be easier for to quickly expand in the future, and it would be easier to tie into other parts of Ask Jeeves. Category :Bloglines, Interesting Technologies | Tuesday, December 27, 2005Indian IT Labour ShortageA McKinsey -Nasscom study finds,If India doesn't take urgent action to reform education and build modern infrastructure, the nation could fall far short of its potential as an outsourcing haven. The first inklings of a tightening talent supply are already visible in rising staff turnover and skyrocketing wages. If offshore outsourcing work grows as rapidly as expected, the study predicts, in five years India will have a shortfall of 150,000 IT engineers and 350,000 business-process staff. Software houses shall have to face this problem in several ways - that may include leser margins as well.The problem is not non -fixable - with concerted efforts from Government, educational instituitions & corporates - Read the specific recommendations( thought they look geneic - the roots of the solutions anyway lay there) to overcome the shortfall and once can easily relate how this fully doable. Am uplodaing from airport and hence very brief - shall write on this is in detail a litte later Category :India | Open Source : Outstanding Issues GaloreSeveral months back,while writing a brief note, on opensource, I concluded that that from a technology, economic and sociological perspective, there is no compelling reason for the open source model to succeed and become dominant. We can assume at best - a niche role for open source in the IT industry. A few months later, I wrote opensource is not yet ready for the enterprise and pointed out that I tend to take a dim view of open source relevance - see Open source -where is the business model, Opensource : Costly & Litigatious and also covered Kim Polese view business models of the open source support companies – where the contours of what need to be done to support open source components become quite clear and a not seeing several players in the opensource world thinking along these lines – it would be a major impediment to consider adoption of opensource in enterprises if the support model is not made widely available and the economics and technology upgrade rate demonstrated as beneficial. I also recently wrote about FOSS movement winning the hearts & minds of the Indian programmer & highlighted the need to have a robust instituitional and infrastructural support for the movement to gain support from offshore developers. James McGovern is urging opensource analysts to provide details of talent search mechanisms, non-technology corporates interest in opensource, vertical solutions using opensource solutions, details of opensource competing and winning against commercial software, best practices in opensource contributions and the like. Look carefully at the set of issues that he has raised – very essential to build up any movement – daring to challenge well established notions of software – Like James , I shall await for pointed responses to these.( Disclosure – Have tried in the past – with limited/no success to get such specific, credible details). Category :Open Source | Blogherald's Blogosphere WatchAlong with the observation that Time has dropped Blogs of the year award this time around, ( it is becoming a little difficult - we need to admit given the huge explosion of the blog population and the cacophony of voices and the various themes around which ideas are expressed.)Blogherals publishes the list of top ten interesting people in the blogosphere. Among the ten, I certainly find these four very interesting. Category :Blogs | Monday, December 26, 2005The Internet Explosion & Changing DynamicsTen years ago, the net was mostly used by geeks; now it's the default way to do business in many countries. Some time in 2005, a dramatic milestone was reached in Internet history: the one-billionth user went online. Because we have no central register of Internet users, we don't know who that user was, or when he or she first logged on. Statistically, we're likely talking about a 24-year-old woman in Shanghai. Morgan Stanley estimates, 36% of Internet users are now in Asia and 24% are in Europe. Only 23% of users are in North America. Om Malik was amongst the first to talk about this. Jakob Nielson points out that it took 36 years for the Internet to get its first billion users. The second billion will probably be added by 2015; most of these new users will be in Asia (The clickz report finds that this can happen much earlier – it talks about adding another 750 million people by 2101). The third billion will be harder, and might not be reached until 2040. Jakob predicts that e-commerce sales will at least double from their current level when more of the current billion users start shopping online. We previously noted that online monetization continues to rise. Jakob Nielson highlights some key things to note amidst this growth: The billion-user Internet is a highly diverse environment that has moved far beyond the elite in Silicon Valley and other global technology hubs. There are hundreds of millions of old people online, and there are even more users without fancy graduate degrees. The difference between elite and mainstream users is getting bigger every day. In another ten years, Americans will be less than 15% of Internet users and will likely account for about one-third its value (Americans typically spend more than other users). The fact that two-thirds of Internet revenues will come from other countries highlights the growing importance of global reach of the internet.Putting aside the details of how to make the multi-billion-user Web work, the very fact that it's realistic to expect a second billion users points to interactive media's compelling value. People all over the world are experiencing unprecedented levels of empowerment: being able to do things is why the Web has grown so fast, and will continue to grow for years to come. Category :Internet, Emerging Trends | Technology, Internet & Aviation IndustryAirlines, Internet & New Economics is an interesting area to watch. Around the world airlines are trying in different ways to make the internet work for them. Electronic ticketing now accounts for 38 percent of tickets sold worldwide and IATA wants the 265 airlines under its wing to achieve 100 percent paperless ticketing within two years. IATA says that there are roughly 350 million tickets printed annually. By 2007, IATA believes that paper tickets may not be needed any more. The benefit – estimated annual savings of three-billion-dollars for the industry, while wider use of new electronic technologies for self service check-in, luggage handling and freight could offer even more in years to come. The beauty is this is not a revolutionary technology but this promises savings and improved convenience all the way down the line to the passenger.The arrival of the Internet booking engine gave self service centre stage in the travel industry besides rediced fares. From 40 million people users of internet in 1995, last year there were an estimated 870 million Internet users, according to the International Telecommunications Union. About 400 million travellers are expected to book online direct with airlines in 2005 - the Internet has also changed the operating environment for established airlines. Across the world, the adoption is showing huge progress. In countries like India, 25% Of Travel Business get done through the internet. Budget airlines by embracing e-ticket initially scored over mainstream competitors .The Internet has helped drive down airlines' costs but it has also fuelled price competition, damaged yields, and exposed the weakness in legacy computer systems in supporting pricing and increasingly complex distribution channels. The industry is scurrying to secure other types of electronic gadgetry to speed progress - and cut costs - on the ground. After the introduction of electronic check-in kiosks by some airlines, moves are now afoot to establish a common technical standard that will allow airports to install the same self-service equipment for all. The Internet is also allowing the development of check-in from home, which is expected to emerge in 2006. Passengers are promised "flash bag drops", stress-free travel and less queues on their way to their flight, while radio frequency electronic tags - RFID - could cut down on lost luggage. As we noted earlier, the rise of the ATK says far less about ruthless “reductions in force” and more about airlines’ desires to mass-produce just-in-time convenience. The traveler experience is getting more and more attention - While inside airports travellers need not think. Mindlessness is a mantra for every Executive Platinum flier.. Continental Airlines’ mean time for automated check-in is 66 seconds. You only have carry-on bags? Barely 30 seconds.As a promoter of mindlessness, the ticketing kiosk’s superi¬ority to the ATM is obvious. With an ATM, you think about how much money you need and how much you actually have. In contrast, an ATK (airline ticketing kiosk) presents you with choices you either have already made (your itinerary) or don’t need to think about (are you carrying any firearms onto your flight?). In all next the internet’s reach to commoners are best exemplified by its leverage by the aviation industry – but the key thing to watch is – more and more of these are all set to happen. Category :Internet, Airlines + Technology, Emerging Trends, Emerging Technologies | Amazing Amazon.com & Its Process EdgeThink technology & holiday season, Amazon has top of the mind recall. With its unmatchable process edge, Amazon.com seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. (Image courtesy : Businessweek) Category :Amazing Amazon | Sunday, December 25, 2005RSS Reader Becoming Integral Part of Outlook Bill Burnham once wrote that in the contest between E-mail & RSS,the former easily wins. Addressing the blogger’s constituency, he added that given the almost ubiquitous reach of e-mail and its "push" nature, for reaching users, one should probably make e-mail the preferred means of subscribing to any blog. Sometime back Microsoft announced that it is baking RSS into Vista – at the platform level itself. Microsoft’s belief is that RSS is so powerful that it needs to be in places other than RSS readers and browsers. Microsoft is focusing on three things in Vista around RSS : (Image courtesy : Michael Affronti) Category :RSS +Vista, Emerging Trends | Om Malik’s E-Book Of His Best Posts To celebrate the crossing of publishing 5000 posts, Om Malik, has created an e-book of the top 20 posts. Om Malik is an evergreen favourite and clearly an inspiring name in the blogosphere. I follow his postings quite regularly and am delighted to see the e-book presented as Christmas gift. Among the posts included in the e-book include ,Om Malik’s well known posts like Category :Blogs | The Digg Phenomenon & Its Robust Ecosystem We recently covered the phenomenon called digg. Digg started with the notion of how to leverage the collective mass of the Internet in various ways: applying it to content, using it to rank content, using it to make content more palatable to the masses. Automated systems take time to crawl the net. Editorial systems have the human factor. They may decide they're not interested that day, or they'll do it tomorrow. Category :Emerging Trends, Digg | Web 2.0 : Brickbats Galore But Hope Persists The Blogosphere is getting to see a lot more strong views on Web 2.0. Not withstanding the galloping progress seen, Richard McManus called Web 2.0 is dead and Russel Shaw wrote web2.0 doesnot exist. Dave Winer provides the best perspective. As he rightly sees it - there are two schools on "Web 2.0." Category :Web 2.0, Emerging Technologies, Emerging Opinions | Geoffrey Moore, Strategy ,Business Models, Long Tail & Optimization The latest issue of Harvard Business Review, has an article titled, Strategy and the Stronger Hand written by Geoffrey Moore, where he talks about two distinct models of businesses. As Geoffrey sees it, there are two kinds of businesses in the world – knowing what they are and which one your enterprise is – will guide you to the right strategic moves. In the complex systems model,enterprises can service large customers and can gor the customer base with large deals centered on mimimal number of transactions. 1000 customers provide a billion dollar business.In the other kind of business, the model is entered on volume operations – here the enterprise is on a hunting mode and strive to acquire millions of customers with significant number of transactions – Say FMCG enterprises. Category :Geoffrey Moore, Long Tail | Saturday, December 24, 2005Gamechanging Blogs, Future, Maturity & Pulitzer PriceSramana Mitra writes, "with the advent of such phenomena as blogs and podcasting, a new era of democratic electronic media publishing has arrived". Excerpts with edits and comments added: Democratic new media publishing enabled at the click of a post-and-publish tab with relatively easy-to-use software wherein text, photo, and video blogs are the most popular forms.The nerds have suddenly set free the liberal arts types in droves. The phenomenon is well at work, and it will change the rules of the game for creative professionals world-wide. It will also change the rules for marketers and brand-builders. It expands the reach and ability to communicate with this universe exponentially, literally within minutes and help in monitoring trends and have other experts participate and contribute; the net effect being a richer and deeper knowledge base. With time, more people will take advantage of these democratic new media publishing opportunities. More serious writers and creative professionals will learn to market and sell their work using the Internet. Micro-payment mechanisms will mature, ad-supported business models will improve, and auctions of good work will become possible. A quality evaluation system will start to emerge as we go along. Good writers, good audio broadcasters, and good filmmakers will be able to monetize their work abundantly and creatively. She boldly goes ahead to predict that there will be the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize for Internet content—equally prestigious, equally well respected, equally well-regarded. Quality content that's published, managed, distributed, and marketed through blogs, video-blogs, photo-blogs, and audio-casts, is a macro-phenomenonA well written note – and if I may add, with the dizzying growth of the blogsphere the distinction between the big, high-traffic blogs and the rest of the world of blogging will be increasingly sharply polarized. Somebody predicted the end of the individual blogger- though it has not yet happened in a pronounced way. There would come a day when we can see where top bloggers won’t be just viewed as mere bloggers but would be seen as doing something very different from the rest of the folks.. Category :Blogs | FT Names Google’s founders As Men of the Year Google’s founders may have conquered the internet world in 2005 – but given their outsized ambitions, this may only be a start. Sergey Brin and Larry Page are named as Men of the Year by the Financial Times, harbour hopes that reach well beyond their search engine business to “make the world a better place”. Image Courtesy : AFP/Google-HO/File Category :Awards, Google | FOSS Movement : Winning The Hearts & Minds Of The Indian Programmer Gervase Markham highlights that the US companies, being squeezed by low-cost, high-work-ethic competition from Asia, are looking to cut overheads by outsourcing their IT jobs – most of these go to India, as the country leverages the widespread knowledge of English, a legacy of its colonial past. In terms of the global IT landscape, it is perhaps more significant. As it is becoming uncontestedly clear that NPDI efforts shall be outsourced more aggressively in the coming months, there is also an invisible battle that is going in to win the battle for the hearts and minds of those tens of thousands of Indian software developers. Just as in the American market, on one side are the large commercial enterprises like Microsoft, hoping to tempt them with visions of a smoothly-integrated development system from a single vendor. On the other side is the free software movement, talking about the importance of liberty, unrestrictive licensing and control of your own computing environment. At stake is the ability to harness the brainpower of an entire subcontinent of hackers. During his recent trip to India, Bill Gates talked about recruiting top class Indian talent through innovative competition – this created huge publicity. By contrast, the FOSS.IN conference, a week beforehand in the very same venue, received comparatively little publicity. Friday, December 23, 2005Microsoft & Opera Browser John Dvorak sees in Microsoft's announcement that it wouldn't upgrade the Internet Explorer for the Macintosh, leaving that market segment to apparently languish and gravitate towards the Safari browser and Firefox as to be watched carefully . Microsoft does not give up markets with a whimper. Something is brewing. The smart move for the company would be for Microsoft to discard the entire code base of Internet Explorer and buy the Opera browser (from Norway) outright and use it instead. Cooltechzone reports that an insider reported that both Microsoft and Google were trying to bid on Opera, but in the end, the software maker took the lead... Perhaps the most desirable feature that Opera has to offer is its mobile version of the browser. Thus far, it’s the best mobile browser currently on portable devices, and it will surely give Microsoft an easy entry into the mobile market, especially as that market continues to flourish gradually. John is right in his assessment that regaining momentum in the browser business is important to Microsoft since the browser has quietly become the mechanism of choice to lead people into search engines If this happening, the biggest loser might be Mozilla Firefox since many consider Opera to not only be the best browser available, but the fastest and the one with the best page rendering engine. AMR On Enteprise Software Trends In 2006AMR’s Bruce Richardson has a set of predictions for 2006 in the enterprise software industry.Predicting a strong year for the enterprise software and services market – he points to five major growth themes for the coming year. Category :Technology Predictions 2006, Emerging Trends | Wink Launches Search Engine That Combines Tag Results Courtesy of Techcrunch saw this annoucement of the launch of Wink. Category :Wink, Emerging Technologies | Opensource & Enterprise SystemI was in a conversation with a leading expert in the content management space yesterday and both of us agreed that the awareness levels of opensource in content management /portal space is going up .Content/Portal management systems are important for two reasons – they are perhaps the lightest of enterprise systems and owing to its nature its reach and usage is perhaps the highest – success/failure can be assessed by a cross-section of people using the system for a myriad purposes. I had earlier written about liferay -opensource portal. JBoss Alfresco are getting more active. Forrester believes after that the open source market for WCM is not yet mature enough to address large enterprises' highly sophisticated WCM requirements. The report rightly highlights that some of the open source WCM solutions currently available on the market are WYSIWYG - "what you see is what you get" - enable versioning, and can support RSS feeds and blogs. However, some of the latest open source WCM releases don't include basics like drag-and-drop environments, picture resizing, or spell-checking functions. There is still a long way to go before open source WCM projects can address more sophisticated needs, such as multimedia coverage and multichannel delivery - both of which will soon be must-have functionalities. Media houses just don't have the time to wait for open source WCM solutions to be ready. The market has already moved on to audio, video, and mobile news coverage & more importantly the report righly stresses on the need to evaluate opensource solutions as rigorously as that of commercial vendors. I had earlier written that opensource may not be ready for enterprise applications space.Open source solutions at the bottom of the stack – typically workhorse infrastructure elements are getting well entrenched – but even a layer above – lets say starting even at database level – we see the hold loosening and as we move up certainly – opensource becomes one among multiple options. I tend to take a dim view of open source relevance - see Open source -where is the business model, Open Source : Reality Check. We also recently covered Kim Polese view business models of the open source support companies – where the contours of what need to be done to support open source components become quite clear and a not seeing several players in the opensource world thinking along these lines – it would be a major impediment to consider adoption of opensource in enterprises if the support model is not made widely available and the economics and technology upgrade rate demonstrated as beneficial Category :Opensource, Enterprise System | The Coming Restructuring Of The Outsourcing MarketNew flurry of deals amidst a near miss of a potential takeover by CSC shows that a lot more action await us ahead. Everest Group sees trends in the global outsourcing industry point to a market ripe for restructuring. Peter Bendor-Samuel, chief executive of Everest Group views that a number of trends are converging and market-changing drivers are coming into play-from the coming of age of the major Indian suppliers, to the unbundling of contracts where deal size is getting smaller. Contracts are getting shorter and work is being spread across multiple providers, and large outsourcing contracts signed in the 1990s are coming up for re-bidding. Look at this well compiled list of top ten events in outsourcing in 2005. This in essence means that the global industry is beginning to see industry consolidation and leadership changes, among other things and is on the verge of restructuring, resulting in a redistribution of wealth across the entire spectrum of suppliers, buyers and investors. Category :Outsourcing Trends | Knowledge : Horizontal & Vertical I read somewhere that vertical knowledge is quickly assimilated; horizontal knowledge takes a lifetime Siebel Takeover : Last Hurdle CrossedEuropean Union clears the siebel takeover of Siebel. EU regulators examined the deal carefully to see how powerful the new company would be in the European market for customer-relations software and if the tie-up would cause wide-ranging "conglomerate effects" & concluded that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition. Oracle has a huge integration challenge ahead but has promised its worried customer base to provide long-term support for new and existing versions of its applications. One unintended consequence seems to be that hosting solutions grow in the wake of Oracle acquisitions. Market sources confirm that operationally the two companies are reasy to be integrated any time. We have to now see the news of employee exits.Interestingly whats the price for acquiring marketshare in enterprise market - I % share is 1 Billion USD!! Anyway wishing the New-New Oracle all the best and hope that its depressed stock prices get a filip. Category :Oracle, Enterprise Software | Thursday, December 22, 2005Search : Next Level Monetizing ModelsBill Gates talked about new models for monetizing searach results. Gravee, a new meta search engine hopes to shareg ad revenue. with content owners and publishers for being included in its index.Gravee relies on the search results provided by popular search engines like Google,Yahoo and MSN and presumably the idea is that more publishers would be willing to provide Gravee with free access to their content, and this would drive users to Gravee because of its superior offerings. Siliconbeat further notes that with Gravee's AdShare program, when a user clicks an ad on Gravee, "up to 70%" of the ad revenue generated as a result is divided between the 10 sites included in the natural search results on the page (i.e. 70%/10 = 7% of ad revenue to each Web site on the page - for every ad that is clicked). Gravee also shares up to 35% of revenue with publishers who join Gravee's "affiliate program" and place Gravee's search box on their site. Category :Web 2.0, Search Monetization | Offshoring New Technologies Andy Hayler talks of his experience in offshoring BI work and highlights the quality focus and good documentation capabilities of indian offshoring vendors are more amenable to traditional applications and opines that it may be a difficult proposition to take on BI consulting, application development and maintenance work in the onsite-offshore model.He beleives that BI applications may be difficult to offshore owing to its inherent nature. Distractions & Tryst With Attention Modern humans may not be able to get rid of the constant interruptions in our day, but can manage them better. In general, people are the exception handlers in all automated workflows, and intelligence and judgment won’t be automated anytime soon. The challenge may be in finding how to connect people and services. Managing that scarcest of resources, attention, is a huge challenge. It’s vital that people choose which channel to be interrupted on.But stuffing the same messages down one channel or another doesn’t alter the nature of those messages, or reduce the total effort required to process them.Linda Stonesays, for almost two decades, continuous partial attention has been a way of life to cope and keep up with responsibilities and relationships. our attention bandwidth is strecthed to upper limits. We think that if tech has a lot of bandwidth then we do, too. With continuous partial attention we keep the top level item in focus and scan the periphery in case something more important emerges. Continuous partial attention is motivated by a desire not to miss opportunities. We want to ensure our place as a live node on the network, we feel alive when we're connected. To be busy and to be connected is to be alive. We've been working to maximize opportunities and contacts in our life. So much social networking, so little time. Speed, agility, and connectivity at top of mind. Marketers humming that tune for two decades now. Now we're over-stimulated, over-wound, unfulfilled. A consequence of email culture is that we don't make decisions: send emails around. We're shifting into a new cycle, new set of behaviours and motivations. Attention is dynamic, and there are sociocultural influences that push us to pay attention one way or another. Trusted filters, trusted protectors, trusted concierge, human or technical, removing distractions and managing boundaries, filtering signal from noise, enabling meaningful connections, that make us feel secure, are the opportunity for the next generation. Opportunity will be the tools and technologies to take our power back. - Think little. Don't try to become a "superhero of organization. Category :Emerging Trends | Tim Berners Lee Enters The BlogosphereFrom Various Sources - Tim Berners Lee has a Blog. He becomes the latest in the list of celebrity/legend to grace the blogosphere. He writes that his blog is at DIG, the Decentralised Information group at MIT's CSAIL and adds that he intends it to be geeky semantic web stuff mostly. The blog won't be for W3C questions which should really be addressed to working groups. No wonder his blog receives amazing number of comments. At CERN in 1980,Berners-Lee proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. With help from Robert Cailliau he built a prototype system named Enquire. In a decade, CERN was the largest Internet node in Europe, and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to marry hypertext and Internet. He used similar ideas to those underlying the Enquire system to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first web browser and editor (called WorldWideWeb and developed on NeXTSTEP) and the first Web server simply called httpd (which was short for HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon). Currently, Tim Berners Lee is working on the Semantic web filled in with with interesting possibilities Category :Tim Berners Lee, Legend Blog | Wednesday, December 21, 2005Hosted Services, SaaS & OutagesWhen hosted service Typepad went down, it drew severe criticism that Jeff Nolan decided to switch to a new platform. Blogger has given me enough anxious moments in the past with outages. Category :Saas, Emerging Technologies | TravellingHad been in seven different cities in the last eight days. Too much travel and heavy pressure on time - shall resume blogging @ regular pace in a day or two. |Tuesday, December 20, 2005Offshore Firms : Acquisitions AhoyWipro announces the 100% acquisition of Austria-headquartered semiconductor design services company NewLogic. Nice way to announce close to the end of the calendar year (Indian HQ firms generally close the financial year in end of March).Indian Headquartered companies have made a series of acquisitions this year – all in the mid-to small range this year. Watch these acquisitions closely – many think that all the top Indian players are more or less all the same. Nope. Generally speaking fast growing service firms do not make defensive acquisitions - they are mostly aimed at growing the business more, as in this case. Acquisitions provide direct insights into identified growth areas and the potential to further strengthen the presence in chosen service areas/Geographies. All the offshoring firms are seeing phenomenol growth in Europe.In general while acquisition moves show the surge in confidence levels about future – they also portend another important happening – the globalization of the offshore vendors – A few more of such small steps would bring in a sea change in the outlook towards the market. That’s why I insist on calling the big firms as Indian headquartered offshoring companies as against Indian offshoring companies. Category :Offshoring Firms, Emerging Trends | Enterprise Software Industry : Mid Life CrisisThe enterprise software industry is undergoing a massive transformation – while the demise of many smaller players are getting postponed, I wrote that it may be that the industry may undergo mutation before consolidation and predicted structural changes ahead. David Roux, co-founder and managing director of corporate investment firm Silver Lake Partners finds that small startup companies need to rapidly grow beyond $100 million for being able to make money. Most companies that earn $100 million or less tend to lose money & he does not see the return of those days . when the software industry as a whole grew at 20 to 30 percent. Likeother mature segments of the computer industry such as storage and semiconductors, the growth levels for software industry shall also stabilise. The "dirty little secret of the software business" as he sees it is the fact that that the average selling price of software products has declined over the years. Cost saving measures have ensured that the software industry has returned to growth and profitability Only those enterprises that generate more than $5 billion in annual revenue, sustain profit margins greater than 30 percent. Companies that generate annual revenue of $1 billion to $5 billion in annual revenue drop down to profit margins of around 17 percent. Midsize companies that are producing revenue of $100 million to $1 billion can sustain 9 percent margins. But companies that can't quickly grow beyond the $100 million level are generally losing money. The question before small to midsize software companies is how quickly it could get to be a $5 billion business or bigger. These factors are behind the consolidationthat is going on in the software industry & the market share of the top three software vendors, Microsoft, Oracle & SAP have increased from 24 to 30 percent just in the past five years. Four years ago corporate IT departments devoted 65 percent of their budgets to maintenance of existing systems and 35 percent to acquiring new technology. Today maintenance spending has increased to 75 percent and new acquisitions are down to 25 percent. This means it will be harder than ever for small companies to win a share of this business. The software companies have a huge untapped source of credit that they could use to fund future growth & the software companies will steadily increase their use of debt to fund growth as the industry continues to mature – This could keep fanning the wave of innovation in enterprise software. Category :Enterprise Software | Monday, December 19, 2005Microsoft CRM : Miles To Go Microsoft has begun shipping the much awaited Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, the first major update to the CRM software Microsoft launched three years ago. The new version fills functionality gaps that had left Microsoft lagging behind its midmarket CRM rivals. Customers who bought Microsoft CRM soon after its launch have had a long, often frustrating wait for substantive improvements. The update adds an automation module for direct marketing and a service module to coordinate staff schedules. It also fixes glitches that had frustrated customers, such as the synchronization technology for remote users. Early demonstrations show that the new CRM software and Outlook share a nearly identical look and feel. Category :Enterprise Software, Microsoft | The Probabilistic Age & The Wisdom Of CrowdsChris Anderson writes that systems like Wikipedia, Google & Blogs operate on the logic of probabilistic statistics, which sacrifices perfection at the microscale for optimization at the macroscale. This age, we're depending more and more on systems where nobody's in charge; & as chris sees it the intelligence is simply emergent. Wikipedia may not be more "authoritative" than Brittanica. Britannica's biggest errors are of omission, not commission. It's shallow in some categories and out of date in many others. And then there are the millions of entries that it simply doesn't and can't, given its editorial process-have. But Wikipedia can scale to include those and many more. Today Wikipedia offers 860,000 articles in English - compared with Britannica's 80,000 and Encarta's 4,500. Tomorrow the gap will be far larger. The good thing about probabilistic systems is that they benefit from the wisdom of the crowd and as a result can scale nicely both in breadth and depth. They do this by sacrificing absolute certainty on the microscale, any single result ought to be crosschecked for veracity.The same is true for blogs, no single one of which is authoritative. But collectively they are proving more more than an equal to mainstream media. Likewise for Google, which is arguably the first company to be born with the alien intelligence of the Web's large-N statistics hard-wired into its DNA. That's why it's so successful, and so seemingly unstoppable.These probabilistic systems aren't perfect, but they are statistically optimized to excel over time and large numbers. They're designed to scale, and to improve with size. Both market economics and evolution are also probabilistic systems. The fact that a few smart humans figured this out and used that insight to build the foundations of our modern economy, from the stock market to Google, is just evidence that our mental software has evolved faster than our hardware. My left brain tells me to accept this perspective from chris as proper - but..A nice article worth reading and discussing. Category :Probabilistic Age, Emerging Trends. | Japan Plans New Internet Search EngineMatsushita Electric Industrial, Hitachi, NEC and Fujitsu as well as telecom carrier Nippon Telegraph and Telephone and public broadcaster NHK & Japan's government, and universities are teaming up to develop their own Internet search technology. The Japanese society now recognizes that Information searches have become a source of wealth. Japan's concerted effort was aimed at competing with Google . I earlier wrote about a new metasearch engine launched in Asia. Somehow this non-US internet related products do not do well -(I have no complaints – The US rightfully deserves its position as the leader in the online space). While I am not sure how the objective of making japanese companies more competitive with initiatives like this - it is a welcome move - long overdue..If any this can only help things improve globally and force more innovation. Category :Japanese Search Engine,Emerging Trends | Sunday, December 18, 2005Google, Gtalk API’s Raise The Bar : Skype Better Watch OutThe pace at which things move in the online world is indeed amazing. In early September I wrote that Skype may well follow the principle of being a natural part of larger ecosystem with open standards to avoide being nichified.Interesting to watch skype blossom into an ecosystem. Courtesy of Mike Arrington came across this development - Google has just released a set of components called Libjingle that allow third party applications to interact with Google Talk. The components, which include some source code, are being released under a very liberal berkely style license allowing for free incorporation into commercial and non-commercial software. Google says in its API site that this is released as part of its ongoing commitment to promoting consumer choice and interoperability in Internet-based real-time-communications. This can be freely incorporate into software and distributed without any restrictions. There are several general purpose components in the library such as the P2P stack which can be used to build a variety of communication and collaboration applications. A summary of the individual components of the library reads like this: Category :Google Talk, Emerging Trends | Bruce Perens' 2006 ForecastsBruce Perens makes a set of forecast for 2006. With increase interest in opesnource showing up and with developments like this taking place - it is certainy worth watching what Bruce perens has to say - with my comments added. Category : 2006 Predictions | The Changing Ecosystem : New Media & Super Specialised ExpertsDana Gardner points to a new trend around IT industry analysts reaching new audiences and better serving their traditional audiences through RSS-enabled blogging and podcasting. Indeed real-time analysis via free syndication is gaining quite a bit of attention. Vinnie writes about the changing influence game.He points out that the technology marketers need to think beyond including PR (Public relations with print media), AR (Industry Analysts) and IR (investor relations, which is handled more by the CFO's team) and look at two other categories - one already established - Procurement Consultants and a newer one - Tech Blog sites for coverage as these can be just as influential. See my coverage on tech blogsites.So much so, Nokia has a blogger relationship blog site. tech.memorandum sifts through hundreds of technology-oriented blogs to find the hour's hot topics and who is saying what about them. The results are presented concisely in a single place, updated every few minutes. The difference between the old media elite and the new blogging elite is that the latter gets redefined much more frequently. Many analysts take different positions at diferent time - sites like Armadgeddon have been setup to look at real stories, analyst gaffes and (un)predictions, analinguo, rumours, gossips etc. While writing on the role of procurement consultants, Vinnie highlights the role that such firms can play in covering up influencers at play in many of the procurement steps. The vendor marketing arms may not be in a position to adequateky prepare their sales teams for these steps. I agree that for all major deals on offshoring/outsourcing, procurment consultants and If I may add - Many organisations now routinely track the procurement consultants & legal consultants and their perspective - sitting on both sides - supplier and buyer. Tough negotitations in terms of service level enforcements, contractual violations governance, assessment criteria and mitigation, resoure scaling besides related things are in large measure influenced/set out by these expert consulting houses I see heady days for these type of services. All these point to a new ecosystem - analysts leveraging new media, blogs getting more influential, sourcing/procuring consultants playing a larger role than ever(this we might have seen in other industries already - but becoming firmly entrenched in IT services/BPO industries)- indeed in this complex and competitive world - more than ever multiple dimensionsal readiness and gearing in a non-negotiable for success - this creates a multiplier effect for opportunities - the new ecosystem elements and those associated with them clearly shall play a major role in the days to come. Category :Services Ecosytem | Saturday, December 17, 2005The Most Exciting Thirty Years Of Technology : Evolution Of The Personal Computing IndustryWhile pondering over the debate on 100$ computer - views against by Intel and a set of counter arguments, courtesy of James Seng, came across this excellent article on the recapping the thirty year of personal computers. The story of the personal computer is a fascinating tale, it is ever exciting to read. As Jeremy points out, When you step back and look at the big picture, the overall dominance of the PC becomes clear. In fact it wasn't until 1986 that the PC platform first surpassed 50% market share and that was more than a decade after the first personal computer was sold. Bill Gates then recalled that many mainframe computers had spawned work-alike clones in the past. It was this foresight that enabled him to get IBM to agree to a contract whereby Microsoft could license MS-DOS to third parties. IBM, thinking in mainframe timelines and assuming that clones would be perpetually years behind the originals, thought nothing of this stipulation. They were only concerned with getting the lowest possible flat rate for MS-DOS (which they mistakenly called PC-DOS) in the first place. A combination of extreme foresight and even better luck enabled Microsoft's rise to dominance along with the PC platform. A handful of geeks and enthusiasts turned that dream into reality, and today personal computers are everywhere. Over 173 million computers were sold in 2004, and the figures are expected to continue to rise, as falling prices enable people all over the world to enjoy the benefits of personal computing. A well researched and compiled article - must read for all those tracking, using and working on emerging technologies. Don't miss the lovely chart om market shares of various vendors - in fact it is a good indicator of how the technology itself has evolved and likely to shape up in future. Category :Emerging Technologies, Personal Computers,100$ Computers | New Media Rich Technologies & Two Way WebJon Udell points out that despite a long campaign to encourage publishers of Web audio and video to enable linking and quotation, media content seldom offers the necessary affordances -and points to his inability to link a video content from syscon-tv site. The fallback strategy was to download the video and snip out the brief segment needed. But because the FLV (Flash video) file was delivered using Macromedia’s proprietary RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol) instead of HTTP - the other delivery option for FLV files could not be downloaded. Video screen capture seems to be the only repreive. Digital rights management opponents suggest that technologies such as Microsoft’s Protected Video Path will soon prevent this kind of copying. He argues that should the DRM movement is let to define the media rich technolgies, highly influenced by Hollywood if it has its way would force all to pay a terrible price. Digital audio and video tools, formerly wielded mainly by media pros, are now used increasingly for ordinary business (and personal) communication & jon rightly points out that we’ve hardly begun to understand the kinds of tools and techniques that will enable ordinary folks to compose and remix rich media in the same ways that - almost without thinking about it - we compose and remix text. Today’s digital media landscape is a welter of incompatible formats, containers, and players. Because the ruling metaphor is entertainment, not collaboration, the flow of data is one-way: from producers to consumers. The textual Web has, finally, embraced the two-way model that Tim Berners-Lee envisioned right from the start. That collaborative style is, more than anything else, what the Web 2.0 meme describes - afterall remixing data with high quality Web 2.0-friendly sources yields new possibilities and value. This is one of the bigger concepts that would help many organizations leverage Web 2.0 the most. The music industries attempt at DRM looked ridiculous and the sony fiasco and intel moves are quite scary.I agree with the viewpoint that so long as the tech industry aligns itself with Hollywood’s agenda of control, the two-way media Web will remain an elusive dream. Category :DRM | Google, Microsoft & AOL Stake AOL & Google are reportedy in negotiations whereby AOL would be able to sell additional ads for its search engine also powered by Google on top of those provided by Google, according to a WSJ report. Google also could promote AOL Web sites among sponsored links in search results. This follows the reported agreement beween Microsoft and AOL - these two would have combined their advertising forces to form a massive global advertising network, selling multimedia, brand- and search-related ads for their own Web sites and third-party sites on the Internet. The MSFT- AOL deal also would have included joint promotions and content-sharing between the sites. Now comes the news that AOL may continue to prefer Google in place of Microsoft.Google derives as much as 10 percent of its advertising revenue and traffic from its partnership with AOL through sponsored listings within its search engine. And although that percentage has dropped from 12 percent a year ago and will likely continue to fall, the estimated $400 million in revenue isn't likely easy for Google to give up. Category :Emerging Trends, Google +AOL | Lawson, Intentia Merger Getting Delayed Infoworld reports that Lawson Software and Intentia International will have take more time for coming together. The two companies say that they are extending the deadline by three months for completing their planned merger. The coming together , was expected to give them the size to become the dominant vendor in the midmarket ERP software space. Three observations here: Category :Consolidaion, ERP, Lawson + Intentia | Friday, December 16, 2005China Surpasses US & EU In Exporting Information Technology Goods IBD points out that China,the world's No. 7 economy exported $180 bil in information and communication devices such as laptops and mobile phones in 2004, surpassing the U.S., with $149 bil, as No. 1, as per the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. China, the world's No. 2 computer market, is shifting its supply base from reliance on Europe and the U.S. to Asia. Category :China, Emerging Trends | Telco’s, VoIP & Online Majors & Two Tiered Internet Tech Memeorandum points to a very timely article on the Telco's move to setup a two tiered internet. The article points out that the telco majors wants the right to create a two-tiered Internet, where the telecom carriers' own Internet services would be transmitted faster and more efficiently than those of their competitors - earlier it was speculated that QoS could be used to assign different priorities based on the source carrier/media.The online majors fear such a move would give telecommunications companies too much control over a fast-growing part of the Internet.Telcos are working on ways to deliver broadcast-quality television over the Internet. Telco’s are offering their own advanced Internet video services to their customers, & wanting to charge consumers a premium fee to connect to the higher-speed Internet. Telco’s also want websites to be charged a premium to offer their video to consumers on the higher-speed Internet. That could mean that a company like Yahoo might have to pay AT&T to send high-quality video to AT&T subscribers. Telcos think that since they are spending billions of dollars to build new fiber-optic networks that can carry more data, they are entitled to give their own offerings the bulk of Internet bandwidth, and to charge others for higher-speed access. Through DSL currently they telcos provide internet access but cable TV companies are providing stiff competition. Telcos now want to provide Internet-based television. They want to offer all the programs now available on cable, as well as movie and game trailers, and full-length films. Through new technical solutions they want to overcome limitations in providing such services and they need to build additional network capacity to handle these. The heart of the matter is that most content providers want equal access to the premium, higher-speed bandwidth, while telecom carriers want the right to treat this premium pipeline as a private Internet. The range of services that could thus be offered could alarm the online majors. Category :Emerging Trends | Thursday, December 15, 2005It May Well Be Wikipedia & Brittanica And Not Wikipedia Vs BrittanicaNature Magazine writes that while Wikipedia has become the 37th most visited website, according to Alexa, a web ranking service. The site is getting serious flak from the likes of former Britannica editor Robert McHenry who once declared one Wikipedia entry — on US founding father Alexander Hamilton — as "what might be expected of a high-school student". Opening up the editing process to all, regardless of expertise, means that reliability can never be ensured, he concluded. Nature's investigation suggests that Britannica's advantage may not be great, at least when it comes to science entries. In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by Nature's news team.Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively. As the challenges of being a wikipedian are indeed substantial, the process of updating and social discipline of correcting and referencing needs to improve- signs are positive. At the end of the day it could very well be the case that it is Wikipedia & Brittanica and not necessarily Wikipedia Vs Brittanica. |FeedFlare : Breaking The Island MentalityDick Costello writes about the new advances in feedburner. This feed service is indeed improving over a period of time and is indeed innovating a lot faster than others. We earlier covered the perspective on how feeds will change the way content is distributed, valued, and consumed. The importance of the feed item and the ability to leverage the structure of the feed to build a bridge between web services and the content item is in general well known. FeedFlare shall enable publishers to configure a very slim "footer" containing customizable actions that will appear beneath each item in a feed. FeedFlare is initially launching today with seven simple options, including: Category :Feedburner | Mobiles , Growth& Enterprise Adoption As I begin to upload this post from Seoul, I am not able to overlook the vast advances the mobile phenomenon is making. A very top executive in Seoul told me about the existence of mobile technology powered marketplace for drivers to bid to take drunken citizens back home.Essentially these drivers bid in an auction based on a request triggered through the mobile for driving drunken citizen's vehicle back home. Russ claimed that 2005 shall be the year of mobiles. As we noted in the age of mobility, tools such as e-mail and instant messaging have been around since the dawn of the internet era, but it has taken a wireless communications revolution to turn them into a constant and inescapable fact of life for a growing part of the population. WiFi networks - assure the digitally addicted of a permanent and ubiquitous connection to the wider world. A new study on enterprises adopting wireless sows enterprise spending is set to rise from $50 billion in 2005, as operators, handset manufacturers, enterprises and other companies begin to adopt more coherent strategies. Enterprises of varying size and location are embracing wireless services in multiple ways and spending is set to increase to more than $130 billion in 2008 for enterprise wireless hardware, software and services. Most enterprises remain organised around separate IT and telecoms functions. The enterprise market remains one of huge untapped revenue potential for mobile operators as they struggle with saturated penetration rates and slow consumer uptake of mobile data services. As wireless service providers look beyond consumer and voice services towards more lucrative enterprise and extended data services, however, there are infrastructure, application, security, and operational issues that must also be addressed. In addition, standards are still emerging, continuous mobile connectivity remains a mystery, and enterprises require greater capability, reliability and availability to truly embrace mobility. Category :Mobiles, Emerging Technologies | Wednesday, December 14, 2005Offshoring Is Not Just Cost Advantage Or Centered On Ricardian LogicThe perceptions about offshoring are yet to change even amongst the cognoscenti. A recently released analyst report berated organizations for using consultants from offshore doing high end process consulting. Just saw an agency news – IBM plans to adopt this offshoring model for providing similar services. Someone told me that ten /fifteen years from now Asia would lose out to Africa on offshoring as costs in Asia would go up and by then Africa would be seen in a better light. Laughbale as these are – keep hearing so many such rubbish statements dished out quite regularly. Roger Martin has come out with a good perspective on what really constitutes the building and toning of offshore organizations – He sees that India's leading companies haven't just read the design and innovation manual but also embraced and internalized it.(Hat Tip: Sriram) Each is dedicated to finding, developing, and empowering creative talent. Each believes that deep user understanding is the fuel that powers creativity and innovation. Each has a CEO with a bold approach to transforming the future. Each prototypes and refines new services until users are delighted - and then starts all over again. The employees at these globally oriented businesses are not, by any stretch of the imagination, huddled over their workstations, entrusting all creativity, design, and innovation to their "First World" competitors. Indian companies along with cost advantage are readying to compete at design and innovation. He is spot on when he declares that the Ricardian logic emphatically fails to apply. To ward off Indian and Chinese competitors,in the design & innovation race, he rightly advises that knowing reality is the first step - they had better start by rejecting the notion of an apparent trade-off between low cost on one hand and design and innovation on the other. They need to think "and" - not "or" - and get to work designing. Category :Asian Innovation, Emerging Trends | Tuesday, December 13, 20052006 : Web Advances - Some PredictionsRobin Good has a set of predictions for web& media related areas that need to be watched in the next twelve months: I agree with five of his ten predictions as likely to happen in the next twelve months: Category :Emerging Trends, Emerging Technologies | Alexa/Amazon : Path Breaking Moves – Dawn Of Web 3.0 WSJ reports that Amazon(Alexa) plans to allow software and Web developers to request customized data searches when it scans the Web to seek new information, something that other commercial search engines generally don't allow. Through the just launched The Alexa Web Search Platform, it provides public access to the vast web crawl collected by Alexa Internet. Users can search and process billions of documents - even create their own search engines - using Alexa's search and publication tools. The tools shall let developers make special requests for information such as images or music files during Web crawls. Big search service players offer developers access to their Web indexes. Most of them offer software-developer kits and APIs, or application programming interface, which let programs access an operating system and other services. Category :Web 3.0, Alexa, Emerging Trends | Sensible Value Accretive AcquisitionsSome friends/associates wrote to me that I might have been a liitel hard in assessing the success of Oracle's acquistions. No, I am not is my submission. Upon seeing this move by he giant, I want to refer back to an earlier post of mine wherein when the acquisition announcement came, I wrote that this acquisition has more value for Oracle in that it is acquiring an entity operating in a space where Oracle is at best seen to be having a light presence. Oracle’s horizontal acquisitions may be seen to be a ploy to eat competition – but this one like the acquisition of Retek can be seen as better fit .With this proposed acquisition of GLog, Oracle gets stronger on paper with a compelling, comprehensive offering for supply chain and logistics management. Oracle and GLog have complementary products with a shared focus that information and adaptive business processes are key to achieving corporate supply chain goals.The point to note here is – acquisitions made to supplement and complement existing offerings generally are sensible and in few cases can provide disproportionately better results. Acquisitions made to kill competition and gain marketshare by bruteforce would only be seen as little value adding & potentially depress stock prices. Category :Acquisitions,Emerging Trends | USA Today : Print & e-newsrooms mergeIn what can be seen as a decisive move USA Today is combining its print and online newsrooms in a move that the newspaper hopes will create a news organization that goes beyond an "arm's-length collaboration." The newsrooms will be combined to create a single USA Today news operation. Areas such as travel, entertainment and breaking news would be integrated first in the planned overall integration. USA Today has a total average daily circulation of 2.3 million, while the Web site had 10.4 million unique visitors according to October 2005 Nielsen NetRatings, according to USA Today.I wrote while covering the competition between the online and print media that online may not cannibalise but could advance easy reach and more sales - numerous studies suggest that several consumers look at websites - before making the actual purchase either online or offline. Recenty Dow Jones announced more profits from online compared to traditional media(This in my opinion reflects two things: Online making traditional media reach to larger people and rise of online world can't be resisted - better embrace it -Indications are that combined strength of both online and offline readership of WSJ is larger than traditional print media readership).Retailers can definitely experience that buyers of all trendy and unique things surf online, do their research before any purchase - In the online world through comparison shopping, targetted advertising, promotional schemes, personalisation and preference patterns all provide unique value that can potentially drive offline sale as well quite significantly. Add mobile technologies and online world - the combination can really create deep impact in the offline world. The daily circulation of American newspapers peaked in 1984 and had fallen nearly 13% to 55.2 million copies in 2003, according to the Newspaper Association of America.The losses come at a time when Americans have many news outlets that didn't exist 20 years ago, including cable-television news channels and Internet sites, as well as email and cellphone alerts. Many newspapers have substantial and free online sites offering much of what is in the printed paper. These sites might not hurt readership overall, but they can erode a newspaper's paying audience. At the same time, many newspapers have undercut the print product itself, trimming staff and coverage. They also have failed to figure out how to attract younger readers to their pages. Warren Buffet is a longstanding director and shareholder of The Washington Post "sees no clear way" for papers to stem recent circulation declines or turn Internet operations into highly-profitable enterprises. The future of newspapers is to change from a news organization into a news community. Readers would like to do a lot more with news. They would like to see the different angles of a story. They would like to understand it. They would like to know what it means for them. They would like to know how to deal with the consequences. And they would like to know what others think. In other words, the news is the beginning of a process, it's not the end. The digital revolution is definitely challenging the media channels.And USA Today has made the right move in bringing atleast the news generation and synthesis frameworks together to leverage and grow both business better. Category :Emerging Trends | Crisscrossing AsiaAs ever travelling again - this time china, Japan & Korea - as I move away from Hongkong, the striking reality is the sweeping change happening all across the region. Meeting with diverse set of people, working on different suituations and trying to meet varied expectations. Met with the president of a Global ERP player yesterday - who had virtually given up chasing opps in China after spending enormous time and investing in matching efforts - virtually confirming DSL views on the enterprise market in China.More of such things later. Shall resume regular updates in the next few days. In the meanwhile do not miss to read John Hagels's views on Dubai. |Galloping Progress : The Best Of Web 2.0 World We had been regularly covering developments around Web 2.0, one of the hottest topics today. We covered several emerging developments around Web 2.0 here, here, here, here. The new services represent a shift to what is being described as "Web 2.0," a generation of Internet software technologies that will seamlessly plug together in new and unexpected ways, much like Lego blocks. Monday, December 12, 2005Oracle, Mergers, Depressed Stock Prices & Opportunities While oracle is all set to announce closure of the Siebel deal, I wanted to quickly assess the progress made by it from a market perspective( my private views, like all posts are in this blog.) - obviously the internal progress card within Oracle would look much better.It is common knowledge that most high tech mergers fail, barring some exceptions. Forbes points out that after spending 14 billion and acquiring 13 odd companies, oracle's stock appears as a petrified one quoting under 13$ - previous peak 15$ in 2002. In the last two years-since the acquisition spree started in earnest-sales are up 24%, net income is up 26% and the company's cash flow from operations is up 18%. The stock has never been this cheap since 1990 on a pure P/E [price-to-earnings ratio] basis, says an analyst. Chuck Phillips thinks that the perception of risk around the acquisitions is much higher than [the risk] actually is and points out the size of the acquisitions were small relative to that of Oracle. He says oracle moves extraordinarily fast to integrate these deals, targeting 30 days at the most for the "vast majority of the decisions." Despite all of the deals- Oracle's core product remains its database. Database sales, lumped together with middleware software for reporting purposes, rose only 4% in the previous quarter, to $1.8 billion, with the value of new software licenses sold not growing at all. Database business is also seeing heightened competition. Some of its acquisitions are definitely value accretive.Applications account for about one-third of the sales, while it has doubled accounting for software sales from acquired entities, WR Hambrecht thinks that if we take the the combines sales of all three companies & compare for same quarter last year, the applications business actually shrank for Oracle. Oracle has a huge integration challenge ahead but has promised its worried customer base to provide long-term support for new and existing versions of its applications. One unintended consequence seems to be that hosting solutions grow in the wake of Oracle acquisitions. Interestingly whats the price for acquiring marketshare in enterprise market - I % share is 1 Billion USD!! Sunday, December 11, 2005Broadband , Digital Capability & India : The Game Changer -Part IIIn Part 1 of this series, we saw the need for increasing the broadband penetration in India. Continuing on the theme, we need to recognise that the consumer electronics sector is in a transition as service driven model begins to dominate. While assessing the road ahead,I covered the perspective that it is found that for India to emerge as a technological power it needs to provide 50 million broadband connections in the next five years. The growth so far has largely been confined to urban areas, as most operators think rural connectivity is not economically viable. The answer is a combination of policy initiatives and innovation on technological and business models. The GOI itself has an ambitious target and expects the usage to rise to 40 million Internet subscribers and 20 million broadband subscribers by the end of 2010 in India (In the Indian context,download speeds of over and above 256 kbps are usually taken as a broadband connection). Category :India, Emerging Trends, Emerging Technologies, Broadband | Broadband , Digital Capability & India : The Game Changer -Part 1Courtesy of Contentsutra, I came across this perspective from Bill Gates on the need for India to increase broadband penetration, as this is the key to realize the benefits of the digital lifestyle products spanning segments such as music, Internet, home entertainment, gaming, wireless and video devices. As he sees it, though software was the glue that connected various devices and platforms, it was broadband that was needed to achieve the digital capability & that adding investments in broadband would drive the full realisation of digital lifestyle. He rightly highlights that broadband was pervasive in many countries but in India with just a million connections, the growth was not quite much in terms of penetration. Over three years, India needs to raise the broadband connections to about 10 million and even skyrocket it by reducing the prices. He sees IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), as changing the face of television viewing using broadband. Microsoft is increasing investments to build digital platforms besides trying to drive down the cost of the digital lifestyle products to make them more affordable. He rightly points out that the Indian software developers to play a key role in building new applications. As I see it, Microsoft has made substantial forays in building solutions towards the digital home business. No wonder he has brought this up in his reent trip to India - but besides microsoft's interests, it is a messsage that India really needed to listen to and act upon - fast at that. Ubiquitious Communication In the Presence EraRecently I covered about the presence era.Feeling another human being's presence is what, at heart, communication is all about, and yet technology has done an uneven job of helping us in this. Hearing a loved one breathing, or bustling about, at the other end of the phone is comforting, but consider a future where we can decide not only how and when people can reach us but also easily share with those people where we are - photos or videos of our environment, our clothing, the room we're in, the view we're enjoying, the Web site we're reading, the movie we're watching. More prosaically, imagine opening a document and seeing not only who else has worked on it but be able to see immediately where they are and whether they're available to discuss it. Imagine a corporate network that told you immediately who else was in the office, and where, through an easy-to-access Web page or desktop program. I see a future where the concept of presence becomes so mainstream that we are able to connect with each other easily, more satisfyingly and less disruptively. One day a phone ringing at an empty desk will seem a quaint historical absurdity. Andrew Kantor believes that we are living in the communication age, mistakenly referred to as information age. We've always had plenty of information, and, being the inquisitive species we are, we've always created more of it. What's changed is that we have new, faster, bigger, and arguably better ways of moving that information around. In an age where mobility is fast becoming the biggest change agent, everyone seems to feel the need to walk around with cellphones in their purses or strapped to their belts. He points out when Hurricane Katrina hit, it all but completely knocked out internet access for New Orleans and southern Louisiana. Besides preventing much information from leaving the area via the Net, the disaster also exposed another problem: The danger of relying on central connection points. He points out that mesh networking— specifically, wireless mesh networking could provide a solution in this case. Instead of each computer being connected only to a server or hub, in a mesh network, computers are connected to one another. Advantages include built in redundancy, no single point of failure. That also makes the network dynamic — people can move in and out of it at will (think fire and rescue) but the network itself remains in place. Second, it allows the network to expand virtually forever. A traditional network is limited by what the central server or hub can handle, because everything has to connect to it. But a mesh network, without that center, has no limits on its growth. Information is only useful when it can move around, and we've done a pretty good job of connecting ourselves to one another. But the next stage might move us from solid networks to more flexible ones, and make the idea of access points obsolete. This is a classic case - where technology creates a new social phenomenon and its adoption pushing new frontiers in technology availability - This reinforcing loop shall certainly create a huge impact across the soceity. Category :Presence Economy, Emerging Trends, Emerging Technology | HP, Sun : Changing Dynamics Awaiting A Different FutureTill recently HP was Caught in a no-man's land between hyperefficient Dell and technology powerhouse IBM, trying to cling on to an identity. I have never been a great believer in HP’s abilities in the past – See the post here. However with Mark Hurd at the helm, HP has grabbed share in key markets such as PCS and storage gear, and shown crisp execution reminiscent of its glory days. Businessweek thinks that it may be that all of the company's businesses are now profitable, after years in which its $25 billion printer business covered losses at the rest of the $87 billion company. Hurd has unleashed major cost cuttings and has brought operational focus to initiatives begun by the marketing-oriented Fiorina. While it is a leading supplier of bare-bones servers, HP has been trying for years to increase sales of higher-margin software and services. Challenges in the form of delayed itanium system rollouts, falling demand,impending war on printer market and pricing on consumer models remain. I hear lot of good news about HP from multiple sources – Mark has been quite brutal in getting fat pay management layers out of the company and definitely HP is getting an operational facelift – Field reports in fact confirm that HP is getting lot more focused. HP also has notched some succes in global outsourcing deals and has a decent presence in India as well which can help in engineering and services significantly. It appears that Mark has created a silent shakeup internally – and without demotivating employees seems to be unleashing a grater sense of accountability and focus. So far so good. So what about the other beleaguered big name- Sun. Nicholas Carr points out Sun clearly lacks a coherent strategy - One minute it’s the Anti-Dell, then it’s the Leader in Responsible Computing, then it’s the Fastest Chip on Earth company, then it’s the Volume Is Everything company, then it’s the Free Software company, then it’s "The Dot in Web 2.0," then it's challenging Steve Jobs to a “pod duel” – and that’s just in the last two months. I agree with Mr. Carr that if Sun is to succeed, it needs to get its act together - to adopt a single, coherent market positioning and stick to it with relentless, unwavering discipline. Also to note is the fact that changing landscape creates new but big opportunities - Sun has the wherewithal to play well in the emerging utility computing space – it has the breadth and depth to offer full fledged consulting and professional services, also focus in a concerted way in areas like RFID where they moved in early – with frameworks in place and acquisitions like that of SeeBeyond should give it a leg up- Sun needs to move away from ideological cliches to becoming more operationally focussed (HP has been in some measure able to do this in the last six months) and stay commercially successful. Category :Enterprise Hardware, Emerging Trends | Forrester on Offshore GDM On Infrastructure Management Infrastructure Management is such an critcal and integral factor in wining outsourcing deals – the challenge and benefits of distributed management augmented by global delivery would become a key factor for all those planning to outsource. This is also a practice that requires lot of maturity in winning and in operations – maintaining service levels. Forrester has just released a report assessing the capabilities of various players in the Infrastructure Management space and the list has included both western & Indian headquartered players. Category :Infrastructure Management, Emerging Trends,Offshoring, Global Delivery | Saturday, December 10, 2005Del.icio.us – Now Part Of Yahoo Del.icio.us founder and Chief Executive Officer Joshua Schachter wrote in his company's official blog that it is now part of Yahoo. Jeremy pointed out that Flickr and Del.icio.us team may work together. This is definitely a big boost for Yahoo – Its yet to take off Web 2.0 would significantly benefit with the advantages that comes along with Del.icio.us. I think Yahoo may benefit a lot more by keeping del.icio.us service as standalone and keep integration with other Yahoo services as an additional option. Category :Web 2.0, Del.icio.us | WIT, IWS, SWITCH : It May Well Be OB4( SWIT) Vinnie points to Jack Sweeney ,editor of consulting magazine writing in his latest editorial "Sometime within the past 3 years, the consulting profession entered a new age". He then coins a new acronym - WIT - for Wipro, Infosys and TCS, the 3 biggest Indian vendors. Stephanie Moore recently published that it is IWS, when it comes to consulting. Vinnie shares his perspective that it should be better called representing SWITCH. Note: A. These like all other post are my personal views. B. The abbreviations : S -Satyam, W-Wipro, I -Infosys, T-Tata, C-Cognizant & H -HCL Category :Offshoring | Web 3.0 : The Hype, Reality & Promise I am seeing a lot of coverage and noise about so called Web 3.0. David Hornik thinks we are in the heart of Bubble 2.0. Sadly, only one thing follows Bubble 2.0 and that is Bust 2.0. & points out that on the good side, there's always Web 3.0. While Web 2.0 may not be a bubble as worse as Kevin sees, I agree with David that too much hype is being created about Web 3.0. Category :Web 3.0, Emerging Trends, Emerging Technology | Friday, December 09, 2005Today’s Youth – Omnipotent Technology Generation Writing on the theme of youth & technology, we saw how technology is making them connected cocoons. We noted that the MTV generation doesn't have fixed values, so they are more open to new technologies. Wi-Fi access to Nintendo gamers ia an important related development. This phenomenon is creating pressures for a variety of industries - The toy industry is responding to age compression,wherein kids are getting older younger – and is creating a revolution in the toy industry. Realizing that today's kids are sophisticated and tech-savvy,they are fighting fire with fire by building their own lines of "youth electronics." No doubt as we covered earlier, mobility has created revolutionalry sort of changes- already, governments have fallen, youth subcultures have blossomed from Asia to Scandinavia, new industries have been born and older industries have launched furious counterattacks and increasingly technology and mobility shall certainly act as the most dramatic change agent in the society. Well,from a Nice-to-have to a Critical- must – That’s the role of technology in the hearts and minds of young people today. There’s been a lot of speculation about the breadth and depth of technology use among young people. This data,part of the forrester finding begins to codify that discussion.Young consumers are using more technology at a younger age to connect with more people than ever before. 87% of 15-year-olds use instant messaging, while nearly half of 12- to 14-year-olds have a mobile phone. The survey focused on young consumers regarding their use of various devices, gaming, online activities, music downloads and file sharing, communication technologies, and attitudes toward media and advertising. Among the highlights: Category :Youth, Emerging Trends | Blog : Piece Of Technology NYTimes joins the list of mainstream publications like Businessweek, Guardian in launching blogs as part of their overall online presence. The New York Times is launching several blogsas part of its new Red Carpet entertainment awards site and, in that context, Deputy Managing Editor Jonathan Landman sent a memo to the staff about The New York Times approach to blogging, writing therein,"A blog is nothing more than a piece of technology... We’ll use the technology our way." Category :Blogs, Emerging Technology, Emerging Trends | Thursday, December 08, 2005Frenzy Called Podcasting The Podcasting frenzy is closer to its peak now. I earlier covered about IBM embracing podcasting and noted that big corporates like GM, Pepsico making concerted efforts to adopt podcasting in a big way. Steve Rubel points to HBO has added a bunch of audio podcasts to iTunes including Rome, snippets of Curb Your Enthusiasm and full episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher!. It may be in full fitness of things that 'Podcast' is declared as the Word of the Year. The New Oxford American Dictionary have selected "podcast" as the Word of the Year for 2005. Category :Podcast, Emerging Trends, Emerging Technologies | Web 2.0 : Priority Is Getting Users As Against Costly UptimeIn response to Jeremy Wright’s view that web 2.0 companies need 99.999% uptime or get toasted David provides a disagreeing but convincing perspective. While agreeing that to go from 98% to 99% can cost thousands of dollars & to go from 99% to 99.9% tens of thousands more – the question to ask is the implications of the site being down for a few minutes.He further alludes what if Delicious, Feedster, or Technorati goes down for 30 minutes? The criticality an average “Web 2.0” application is one with loss of comfort as the result of something going wrong. It’s not a profitable decision to shoot for 99.999% availability for web2.0 applications.The things to watch however is that in the Web 2.0 ecosystem , with site outage, APIs also suffer. Those extended small businesses that use APIs for commercial purposes can be hurt by outage. Scaling is not just about adding more hardware, setting up redundant database, load balancers—but rather more on design, data architecture & re-designing your code. Several times, it is seen order of magnitude improvements come by engineering/tuning and not necessarily by adding costly servers.I have seen several discussions where people are obsessed with scalability & security (disproportionately so). I agree with the point that before the site has users, it’s a waste of time ensuring that they can always get to the service. A good principle to note here : A project that spends a lot of time upfront on scalability is the one that can’t afford to fail. And a project that can’t afford to fail is an inherently uninteresting idea for a new growth business. The key thing for startups to worry is about getting something to a point where there’s reason to worry about it. Category :Web 2.0 | Sony : Malware Ahoy!As soon as I came across this brilliant revelation, I wrote,not only had Sony put software on his system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall. Worse, most users that stumble across the cloaked files with a RKR scan will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files. While the media industry’s right to use copy protection mechanisms to prevent illegal copying is legal,based on what Mark has presented this is a clear case of Sony taking DRM too far. Now, few weeks after the incident,The Register writes that Sony has again been outed for including questionable software on its music CDs, after it emerged a security vulnerability in content protection software shipped on some of its disks could allow consumers’ PCs to be hijacked. According to the EFF, the vulnerability centres on a file folder installed by the MediaMax software shipped on some Sony CDs, “that could allow malicious third parties who have localized, lower-privilege access to gain control over a consumer’s computer running the Windows operating system.” It is a very concerting issue – given the fact that the EFF claims 30 other labels use this software means the big labels either do not realize the harm they are causing by distributing malware or they do not believe they are liable. Its hightime that initiatives like this one from Intel become commonplace. Quite scary indeed - as I wrote earlier, the most important thing for services and users of services to realize is that trust is an extremely valuable commodity that is hard won and easily lost. Category :Sony,DRM, Emerging Trends | RIM : Tougher Times AheadLast Week a U.S. federal judge's decision last week opened the door to a possible injunction that would stop sales of BlackBerry mobile e-mail devices, and shut down BlackBerry service, in the U.S. Gartner has issued an alert warning customers to stop or delay all mission-critical BlackBerry deployments and investments in the platform until RIM's legal position is clarified. The advisory note is spot on in egging customers to demand that RIM's work-around plans be made available — in detail and in public — and carefully review their legal and operational impact. Gartner advises customers not to sign any agreements that could involve them in the RIM/NTP dispute. As contingency measure, alternate solutions for mission-critical applications may need to be put in place. Ofcourse alternative solutions could cause transition costs that will be unnecessary if the case is settled.The best course would be that if the applications are not mission critical , no action may be needed.I do not know of applications where Blackberry plays a role –where it is not mission critical – the key thing about Blackberry is its constant availability and world over at all leves – CEO downwards – whoever has used Blackberry would find it difficult to live without it – such is the powerful impact that RIM has brought forth – but clearly with so much uncertainities around – most of management time and attention would obviously go towards fighting this. An outage would be a near disaster for most users. With increased competition and with Nokia stepping up the heat, RIM may be in for tougher time ahead. Category :Blackberry, Wireless Market, Emerging Trends | Wednesday, December 07, 2005Bill Speak On The Next Big Thing & India India is seeing the big names of the IT industry visiting this quarter – John Chambers, followed by a no- press meet visit by Sam Palamisano, then high profile visits from AMD, Intel’s craig barrett visit – now Bill Gates is in India – The Google founders were here a quarter or so before.It is all happening in India. Bill Gates visit to India always attracts a lot of coverage and attention within India. He also does not disappoint & is very liberal with talking to the media. The media also competes and try to overdo each other. I know that tonight there is a prime slot interview that is scheduled with Narayanamurthy & Bill Gates participating.titled –“Changing India” Category :India | Tech Blogs - The New ElitesWSJ has an article on the rise of the tech blogs - the article notes that in the standard theory about technology blogs - mainstream media were out of touch, elitist or simply ossified, and they would soon be supplanted by a grass-roots army of bloggers. The reality is that while there are now as many tech blogs as stars in the sky, only a tiny fraction of them matter. These are becoming the the tech world's new elite. Reporters for the big mainstream newspapers and magazines, long accustomed to fawning treatment at corporate events, now show up and find that the best seats often go to the A-list bloggers. Big bloggers are frequently pitched and wooed. In fact, with the influence peddling universe in this state of flux, it's not uncommon for mainstream reporters, including the occasional technology columnist, to lobby bloggers to include links to their print articles. So much so, Nokia has a blogger relationship blog site. The easiest way to follow this world is via a useful blog-tracking service called tech.memorandum. It sifts through hundreds of technology-oriented blogs to find the hour's hot topics and who is saying what about them. The results are presented concisely in a single place, updated every few minutes. Another site, Blogniscient.com offers a similar service. The article makes a point here - It is apparently important in the tech blog world to pick a name that is as awkwardly unspellable as possible. The difference between the old media elite and the new blogging elite is that the latter gets redefined much more frequently. All it takes is attracting links from other bloggers. Category :Blogosphere | India : 25% Of Travel Business Done Through The InternetThe internet's deflationary effect is felt on every industry it touches – starting right from the financial services, travel, transportation, printing & publishing, telecom, media & entertainment and a host of other industries. Some airline operations are case studies for extrapolation beyond the aviation industry. Imagine southwest without these technology applications . Look at new features like this – it is clear the airline industry is on the verge of massive change.Looking at the airline industry, the first air ticket was sold via the Internet almost 10 years ago, in December 1995, by Alaska Airlines - just ten years back. Contentsutra points to Agencyfaq story ( reproduced from Economictimes - am not able to see the link to the article in ET site in my quick search), that travel has been the most popular e-commerce category. In the US, net-based ticketing accounts for 90 per cent of the total travel-related transactions. In India too, net ticketing is gaining ground with 25 per cent of the total transactions being conducted online. The data of distribution amongst various travel modes would be more interesting to read. E-tourism is fast gaining foothold in the Indian market with close to 25% of the travel business being conducted through the internet, according to industry estimates. Industry analysts feel e-tourism may contribute 50-60% of the travel business in India in the next five years. Leading travel and tour operators such as Thomas Cook and Stic Travels provide a wide gamut of online services. Right from travel information and flight schedules, hotel room availability to booking tickets, rooms, car rentals and even purchasing travel insurance products as well as foreign exchange can now be done online. There are many other travel sites, however, that act as only information windows of the services and package deals offered by the travel agency, instead of providing real-time reservation services. The recently released UNCTAD report points to an interesting fact that since most information on tourism opportunities in India for foreign inbound tourists is generated, updated and marketed online by major international service providers based in developed countries, these providers end up absorbing as much as 40% of the total profits in the tourism industry. The upside is very high for the fast growing Indian travel market. So much so Karat narrates a conversation with a VC, who promises a major investment in the online booking space in India shortly. Let a lot more of such services bloom – let some trendsetting portals be launched – let a few of them aim to be worldbeaters. From railaway reservation portals launched a few years back to where things are today - this is indeed a good growth - but the space above the top is much bigger. Slowly we are seeing the emergence of the face of New India. Category :India, Emerging Trends | AOL Says Bye Bye Google But Embraces Microsoft WSJ scoops that Time Warner has decided to partner with Microsoft in online advertising. After months of yes-no, no-no, yes-yes discussions, the two biggies are about to announce a deal that would combine advertising-related assets – with very limited dollar changing hands.(Why should it take so much time to finalise?). The article also adds that an agreement is expected to be struck sometime before year-end, but it is still possible that AOL could choose instead to deepen its relationship with Google at Microsoft's expense. Key points: Category :Emerging Trends, Adsense | Tuesday, December 06, 2005Pivoting The Architecture & Utility Model Of The Infrastructure Stack Phil Wainewright writes about a recently concluded discussions at a conclave in Europe and highlights JP Rangaswami’s view viz architecture is more important than any individual IT vendor. Echoing Vinnie’s view, he rightly points out the need for the IT function to get to deliver faster, cheaper and better inside enterprises. With increasing pace towards "consumerization", users are expecting the same ease-of-use and rapid innovation from IT as they get from their mobile phone providers.I am yet to see a credible response to the question where's innovation in opensource. He beleives that open-source software shall play a pivotal role inside enterprises (Even on this count – I find if difficult to look at opensource as an answer) and imagines that in an opensource era would usher in a situation where code escrows are gone, pubic codes benefits still exist and can get better over time and bye to vendor lockins. If anything CIO’s are getting worried about opensource software creeping in solutions above the base stacks – warranting heavyduty maintenance and grappling with code creeps. China : Blogs, IT Ecosystem & ProgressIrving Wladawsky-Bergerwrites that he is really impressed by the changes in china so many dimensions. As he sees it the advances in economic development are remarkable and the university system is equally impressive and notes that china's progress is particularly impressive when one considers what the situation was like just 25 years ago when the country started opening up to the world after the tumult of the Cultural Revolution. Huge progress has been made in the last ten years let alone the last twenty-five. He finds that many blog sites are blocked in China, including that of his – which he says could not be accessed there. I can confirm that this blogsite is also blocked in China. He also finds that even Wikipedia, too was blocked. Not surprising knowing things there – this reflects in the maturity of the IT ecosystem there - that’s shows in many ways - Look at how the state of disarray of chinese software companies. While there is a near unanimous belief that China will be a useful source of skills for Indian companies , the reality is that scaling up is disappointing further confirming the notion that china would not be a big force in IT services. As noted here, for the next three to five years, China has to focus on building the cornerstones of its economy and as important as we think software is, it is not a cornerstone - massive political, economic and demographic shifts must occur before IT/Software can begin to realize its potential. As such we hear murmurs about disappointed investors in china. As Paul Johnson articulates ,this way China won't be able to match India and reasons out, that to have a truly innovative economy, freedom of thought and expression must be encouraged. That is the most important lesson of the modern age. India has this precious tradition, as well as the rule of law, both of which are legacies of British rule. The rule of law is essential to long-term investment on the largest possible scale- clearly a precursor to the formation of a vibrant ecosystem. Its time that china looks for a massive turnaround – its determination to move ahead is palpable and clearly yielding results it has done similar things in the past – in fact no other society could pull off such a massive change – the scale of which no one in history has ever recorded. Category :China | Google’s Ten Golden Rules Upon reading this note on Marissa Mayer,I wrote, Businessweek has done disservice to Google by writing such a trivial article on the inside workings of Google. Google is really onto something big as this listing key work being done within Google shows. Google's startup culture would find this process too boring - as an engineering led company and with a constellation of talent, Google sure must have a more rigorous mechanism and definitely a much more sound plan to conquer the world. The very fact that Google's announcements shows a method proves contrary to the marketing claims made in the article. If on the other hand, if this is what is really happening inside google( which i hope not), it would clearly undermine google's ability to sustain its leadership and support the marketcap. As if to position Google as a sustainable organization and that there is a method behind that binds the organization Eric Schmidt along with Hal Varian write about Google’s internal organizational policies. Category :Google | MySpace Generation nee The Young But Net AddictsYouth, Technology & Connected Cocoons are always an interesting phenomenon to watch.This is not surprising in this iPod generation & presence era,given that technology can only improve,the trend is irreversible. Teenagers use technology to stay in touch with friends at all times - turning their bedrooms into "connected cocoons". The MTV generation doesn't have fixed values, so they are more open to new technologies. Businessweek characterises the MySpace Generation as one that lives online, buys online & plays online. Their power is on an impressive growth trajectory.We are witnessing the world of Generation @. Being online - being a Buzzer, is a way of life for millions of young people and increasingly, social networks are their medium. Today's young people are increasingly establishing their social identity through the web - atleast in affluent nations. For savvy corporates like Coca Cola corporation , these networks also offer a direct pipeline to the thirsty but fickle youth market. Preeminent among these virtual hangouts is MySpace.com, whose membership has nearly quadrupled since January alone, to 40 million members. The article notes that youngsters log on so obsessively that MySpace ranked No. 15 on the entire U.S. Internet in terms of page hits in October, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Facebook.com, which connects college students, and Xanga.com, an agglomeration of shared blogs, is another favourite online hangout place. A second tier of some 300 smaller sites, such as Buzz-Oven, Classface.com, and Photobucket.com, operate under - and often inside or next to - the larger ones. They're already creating new forms of social behavior that blur the distinctions between online and real-world interactions. In fact, today's young generation largely ignores the difference. Most adults see the Web as a supplement to their daily lives. The MySpace generation, by contrast, lives comfortably in both worlds at once. Fully 87% of 12- to 17-year-olds use the Internet, vs. two-thirds of adults, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. For a moment interpose the web on all possible daily activities – the possibilities are indeed infinite.Wi-Fi access to Nintendo gamers ia an important related development. This phenomenon is creating pressures for a variety of industries - The toy industry is responding to age compression,wherein kids are getting older younger – and is creating a revolution in the toy industry. Realizing that today's kids are sophisticated and tech-savvy,they are fighting fire with fire by building their own lines of "youth electronics." No doubt as we covered earlier, mobility has created revolutionalry sort of changes While there is clearly a hype element involved here- the sheer power of youth embracing the net to convert it as a web of social media is certain to create a new intersection –powerful enough to unleash huge tranches of energy, creativity, opportunity and progress. Category :MySpace Generation, Youth, Emerging Trends | Monday, December 05, 2005Mile by Mile, India Builds Competitive InfrastructureAmy Waldman notes that in a span of less than 15 years, capitalism and globalization have convulsed India at an unprecedented rate of change. The Indian government has begun a 15-year project to widen and pave some 40,000 miles of narrow, decrepit national highways, with the first leg, to be largely complete by next year( this leg of the project has suffered delays). It amounts to the most ambitious infrastructure project in the last fifty years. She believes that these effort echo the United States' construction of its national highway system in the 1920's and 1950's & notes that these arteries paved across America fueled commerce and development, fed a nation's auto obsession and created suburbs. They also displaced communities and helped sap mass transit and deplete inner cities. For India, already one of the world's fastest-growing economies and most rapidly evolving societies, the results may be as radical. This is highly needed now as indian competitiveness is still suspect in the eyes of experts. |
