Lubor On Tech

The State of the Mobile Market

2012-02-05T18:16:00.000-08:00

The latest marketshare data for the mobile devices market has been released recently and I thought that it might be a good time to take a look at the mobile market today and tomorrow. First, lets take a look at the data that comes from comScore, combined with the latest Nielsen report and with data from iSuppli and a few other sources. The most widely reported information is the smartphone market share which looks as follows (comScore):

Basically, there are three vendors left today - Google, Apple, and RIM - with RIM losing market share while Google and Apple are growing. A forth vendor, Microsoft is fighting what seems to be a loosing battle to connect with the leading group. According to many analysts including Gartner and IDC, we will see some massive changes in the near future. The research firm iSuppli recently published a report that suggests that the Windows Phone will not only knock off the fast-fading RIM from its 3rd spot but it will even steal the 2nd spot away from Apple:

So why are all the analyst so bullish on Windows Phone when Microsoft has been losing marketshare so far? Well, the next data point may suggest an explanation:

As we can see, the smartphone penetration is still relatively low but growing very quickly. The overall market growth for mobile devices is at 10.8% according to iSuppli and both Nielsen and iSuppli expect that 60% of devices sold in 2015 will be smartphones. That means that there is plenty of marketshare to grab amid the double digit device growth, the rapid growth of smartphone penetration and the decline of other vendors.

Not a bad market to be in, is it? No wonder the vendors are so desperate to grab a piece of this pie. Today, Google and Apple have a clear lock on the top two positions while RIM keeps sliding and Microsoft is nowhere - at least so far. There are rumors about a Facebook phone and HP still has to make up or re-make up their mind about what to do with webOS. Here are some thoughts about the respective players:

Google
Google has grabbed a ton of market share thanks to all the Asian manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, HTC, Sony, etc. They all needed an operating system and since Google Android is free, the choice was easy. So far so good except that there are three big problems looming ahead. First, as a result of the open source model, the Google market has become massively fragmented and application developers struggle to support all the device types. Second, Google acquired Motorola which will make it difficult to keep the competition honest between its own devices and the other vendors. Third, Google is hardly making any money on Android - in fact they are paying hefty patent fees to Microsoft for each device - which makes it a hard business to sustain for a publicly traded company.

Apple
Apple may have lost the top market share spot to Google but honestly, Apple is running circles around everybody. Leveraging their unique value proposition of a tightly integrated system consisting of hardware, software and content, Apple is just piling up profits and making everyone else look bad. Make no mistake, the market share loss in units has nothing to do with market share in revenue and profits where Apple is standing head and shoulders above the rest of the industry combined. The decline in units market share is not a result of an inferior product or any systemic problem. It is more the result of the fact that many users are upgrading their feature phones and opting for the cheapest smartphone available without caring much about the operating system. Those users are clearly not Apple’s target customers. Apple is after the more affluent user who will not only shell out a premium price for a premium brand but who will also keep contributing to Apple’s profits through ongoing purchases on iTunes.

Microsoft
Unlike Google who’s Android is basically a less polished version of Apple’s iOS, Microsoft has built a very distinct and compelling mobile operating system. But adoption is so far eluding Microsoft for several reasons. The vendors selling Microsoft Phone devices are the same lot as those who sell Android. Android is free and Windows Phone is not and so guess who they push more? The second issue is that Microsoft has bet the farm on their Nokia partnership which was a smart move except that Nokia didn’t ship any Windows phones until the end of last year. The third and by far most important issue is the lack of developer support. Apple and Google have attracted many developers quickly leveraging superior tools, compelling business models and - in the case of Google - the open source effect. Microsoft has shown little love to developers so far. Unless Microsoft addresses these issues, they will always continue battling at best for the third place.

RIM
Well, it has been widely reported that RIM is in trouble and just replacing the CEOs is not going to fix that. RIM’s greatest problem is the lack of innovation. The good old BlackBerry may work fine and be more secure than iPhone but it is no longer hip enough even for the executives at stodgy brick-and-mortar companies. Today, RIM needs a purpose, a focus, and a compelling way to differentiate. Leaking pictures of phones that could ship in two years and be almost as cool as the iPhone is today is not going to do it. Even if those new RIM phones were available today, it would hardly make much difference. Besides needing some innovative and competitive products, RIM also has to address the developer support just like Microsoft.

HP
To be complete, I should also mention HP as the only other remaining MOS vendor. Or did they announced that they have killed webOS? Yeah, whatever. I will write another post when I meet a user with a webOS based smartphone.

A Tale of Two Worlds

2012-01-30T20:07:00.000-08:00

Often, when I tune into my Twitter feed, I often get the impression that the world has already moved into a place where all human collaboration is done on mobile devices using social software, all software is delivered as a service, all data is Big Data and lives in the cloud. Often, I meet customers who fit into this category and I get very excited about how they push the barriers.

But then I look again and listen to customers who are different. I meet customers who still ban public social media such as Twitter and Facebook from their organization. Their only approved mobile device is an ancient model of BlackBerry with no built-in camera, and the idea of their data ever entering a cloud send shivers down their spines. While perhaps less exciting, these are often some of the largest customers I meet.

Do I suffer from a multiple personality disorder? Do I live in two parallel worlds that rarely connect?

Well, when we look at the big industry analyst firms in our space, it appears that they too have aligned themselves along these lines of demarcation. They have analysts who cover subjects such as compliance, records management, archiving, security, and e-discovery. Those analysts cannot be found on Twitter, they don’t write many blogs, and their email signature includes long disclaimers. Then, the same firms have analysts who cover collaboration, social software, web experience management, and digital asset management. These analysts are much more visible on social media and they are a little less paranoid about the fact that everything they say is a record and subject to legal discovery rules.

Yes, there are different worlds that co-exist. Sometimes, we marketers like to get ahead of ourselves. We start believing that everybody is on the leading edge. And some customers clearly are. There are many industries with low barriers to entry, comparable products, and high price pressures where it is the technology that allows companies to differentiate. Just think of the competitive pressures in manufacturing, retail or consumer packaged goods.

At the same time, there are heavily regulated industries that have developed a strong record-keeping discipline over the last few decades. Think pharmaceuticals, oil&gas, utilities, and increasingly financial services (Dodd-Frank anyone?). These customers are clearly much more conservative but that doesn’t make them any less demanding or any less attractive for a vendor. Their business requirements are simply different.

Successful vendors can operate on the entire spectrum of solutions - from those catering to the most conservative business needs all the way to those who will explore the very latest technology to get an inch of competitive advantage for the next couple of quarters. The most successful vendors can cater not only to the glamour of the one extreme or the dependability on the other end of the spectrum. They understand the business demands of the organization and can cater to all of them and to any combination in between.

Yes, there are multiple worlds out there which makes our business very exciting!

What Happened to Don't Be Evil?

2012-01-23T19:25:00.000-08:00

Don't be evil?

Google is changing. It was and still is one of the amazing success stories since they have built a highly profitable business based on their search service. In addition to making a boat load of money, Google attracted a lot of positive karma by providing fantastic service and by proclaiming their mantra “Don’t Be Evil”. Ten years ago, they even lived by it.

But, fast forward to January 2012. Google is now a publicly traded company with the typical Wall Street pressure of quarterly earnings. Search-based advertising is still a giant money-making machine and Google keeps innovating by coming up with new ways to make advertisers part with their budgets - i.e. local search, mobile search or map based search. But an important thing has changed since - Google now has competition!

Google’s mission, as stated on their Web site, is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. That’s a noble goal that benefits mankind while allowing Google to make a ton of money along the way. But Google is not true to their mission anymore. For instance, there is a lot of information on Facebook and Twitter and Google is deliberately not searching for it. Is the information on Twitter not part of the “world’s information” that should be universally accessible and useful?

A few days ago, Google escalated this game to another level when it changed its search ranking algorithm to prioritize the information found on its own social network, Google+. This prioritization has little to do with actual relevancy which is supposed to be at the heart of the search ranking algorithm. Instead, it artificially promotes Google’s own fledgling social network which represents another source of advertising revenue for Google. Information posted on Google+ ranks relatively high, often even higher than Web sites to which it points to. Information posted on Facebook and Twitter is not available at all.

This was when Google discovered it had competition.

Now, let’s consider advertising - Google’s primary revenue source. Advertisers who want their content to be visible in Google search will have no choice but to promote that content in Google+. As a result, Google+ will enjoy more traffic and more user interactions while fueling Google’s revenue engine. Pretty clever, actually. Well, diabolically clever if you ask me. By unjustly promoting its own content and suppressing content from its competitors, Google is double-dipping by cross-promoting two of its services. No, Google can’t claim that this is not evil.

This is very evil, indeed. Google has sold out its beliefs. Instead of providing customers with the best possible experience, Google delivers the experience that maximizes its revenue. What’s next? A YouTube video will rank higher than a more relevant video on the Discovery Channel’s web site? You bet! What Google’s doing to Twitter is no different from what Microsoft did to Netscape back in the 90s. Microsoft ended up as the target of a huge anti-trust lawsuit that has had a massive impact on Microsoft’s pace of innovation. Google is marching down the same path now and nobody will like the end of it.

Curiously enough, it is none other than Microsoft that provides Bing, the search engine that can stand up to Google. I’m not trying to portray Microsoft as the angel while calling Google the devil. But Bing can search information on Twitter and while it doesn’t appear to be searching Facebook today, it probably could since Microsoft has a stake in Facebook. Bing still has a relatively small market share compared to Google but that could change.

Because now, Google is evil.

Stop SOPA!!!

2012-01-18T05:44:00.000-08:00

I am against SOPA. I am against PIPA. I am against censorship.
I admire and support Wikipedia, Reddit and other organizations that decided to stand up against the proposed legislation.

PLEASE KEEP THE INTERNET FREE FOR EVERYONE!

Why Acquire Companies?

2012-01-16T19:20:00.000-08:00

I’ve wanted to write this post for a while, but I was worried that you would read too much into it if it was published shortly after any particular acquisition by my employer, OpenText. Obviously, we know a thing or two about acquisitions at OpenText. They are an important part of our growth strategy. But this post is not about any particular acquisition or about OpenText per se, it is about the general reasons why companies buy other companies.

High-tech acquisitions tend to draw a lot of attention when they are announced and most of the coverage is focused on the perceived strategic fit. Or, what the technology pundits consider to be the strategic fit. Unfortunately, most of the time, everybody focuses on the technology and nothing else. Sure, the technical strategy is pretty fundamental for a technology company. Yet in reality, there are many possible reasons for high-tech companies to acquire:

1. Technology
This is what most people think of first and a technology driven acquisition is usually driven by vendor’s “build, buy, or partner” analysis - one of these strategies is the most economical given the cost, time to market, and account control.

2. Access to new markets
An acquisition can give the suitor quick access to new markets for the purposes of growth or diversification - for example to new geographies, new channels, new partners, new vertical markets, or access to exclusive government contracts. Buying a vendor who’s established itself in a given market can be an effective way to get there fast or cost-effectively.

3. Customer base
Buying a customer base can be extremely lucrative in the enterprise software market. Customers typically pay around 20% of the original license cost annually for maintenance - for support and upgrades. Given how sticky enterprise software can be, this is often a highly profitable business for many years to come.

4. Talent
You want to off-shore your development or quickly build a sales force specialized in a new vertical market? Buying a company with that kind of talent may be a quick way of getting there. Just make sure you keep them.

5. Assets
Acquiring a company can be an effective way to get their assets, i.e. a patent portfolio, production facilities or data centers.

6. Outflank competition
Sometimes, buying a company makes sure a competitor doesn’t get it. The company may have been a supplier, strategic partner, or a channel partner to your competitor and acquiring it may be a great way to disrupt the competitive balance of power.

7. Financial engineering
Sometimes, an acquisition makes sense for mostly financial reasons, such as tax loss carry-forwards, profits repatriation, or as a financial investment for the company’s venture arm.

As you can see, there can be many reasons for M&A activities (mergers and acquisitions) - and you might even come up with a couple more. So, the next time you hear about an acquisition, don’t just analyse the technology stacks before passing your judgment on the strategic fit.

Now, let’s get the 2012 M&A season started!

Content Management Predictions for 2012

2012-01-08T19:38:00.000-08:00

Another year over, and a new one just begun...yes, I’m quoting John Lennon. This is the time for resolutions and predictions. After I published my 2011 Content Management Predictions a year ago, I was rewarded by a lot of positive feedback and the article became the top post on my blog in 2011. I believe that every prediction has to be followed by a review and so I published my 2011 Predictions Scorecard just a few weeks ago. This year, let’s do it again! Here are my Content Management Predictions for 2012:

1. Big Data will be the hype of the year
If SoLoMo was the buzzword of 2011, I’m predicting that “big data” will be the hype in 2012. Sure, lots of companies are already talking about big data today but in 2012, everybody will be talking about it. There is no good definition of big data today which means that the marketers and pundits will have a field day. Just substitute the word “data” with “big data” and launch your marketing campaign!

2. “Social” becomes a feature
The year 2011 saw us shifting gears rapidly from social software to social media and finally to social business. That’s a sure sign that the social market hasn’t settled yet. In 2011, it was still unclear who were the legitimate stakeholders of social enterprise - consumer companies moving in, start-ups capitalizing on the hype, or the traditional enterprise software vendors? Well, I’m predicting that in 2012, it will become clear that social software is not a viable stand-alone business and that we will see it subsumed by enterprise software - from Opentext to SAP to Salesforce, but the big catalyst will be SharePoint 15.

3. SharePoint will solve every problem, again
Speaking of, the time has come to make a prediction about SharePoint. 2011 was surprisingly quiet on the SharePoint front with Microsoft focusing on other priorities. In fact, the pundits and wanna-be competitors started poking their heads out and proclaiming rebellious statements about SharePoint. Well, not so fast - the empire will strike again. I predict that SharePoint will make it on the list of Microsoft priorities by the end of 2012 and that just like the previous versions, the Redmond Marketing Machine will turn it into a universal solution for every problem. For a while, we will actually believe it but eventually, things will settle back into the right order. But this time, there may be a new twist in this familiar tune - the cloud!

4. Rise of the hybrid cloud
In 2011, it was impossible to have a conversation without mentioning the cloud which is what we started calling it when we could not tell SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS apart anymore. Clouds are hip and all of a sudden, everybody is a meteorologist! Well, I predicted for 2011 that enterprises will not be rushing to the cloud yet. In 2012, that might change. The cloud-based model makes a lot of sense and now, we have a way to say that we may consider selectively taking advantage of certain cloud-based offerings for some use cases: hybrid cloud. In 2012, we will start seeing hybrid cloud adoption of content management software.

5. Cloudy outlook for open source
Well, all that cloud business has gotta be bad news for open source. Sure, there will always be customers who will like to tinker with their deployments like I wrote about last February. But customers hoping to save money - or at least to reduce their capex - by embracing open source have to seriously consider the cloud-based offerings. Sure, Drupal will be still around and probably still growing but the Great Open Source Movement will hit the trough of disillusionment in 2012 - courtesy of the cloud.

6. Consumerization is here to stay
In my 2011 look back, I admitted that consumerization was one significant trend that I had missed in my predictions. In 2012, consumerization will continue. Particularly the trend of employees bringing their own devices to work will continue. Facing the rapid pace of innovation in consumer devices, companies will not be able to keep up and they will have to give in. People will simply buy the latest gadget and use it for work. OK, since this is too easy of a prediction, I am also predicting that the consequences of consumerization will be the number one topic for the records management and information governance crowd in 2012.

7. End of convergence
One of the consequences of consumerization will be the end of device convergence. Until now, I believed that all of the cool functionality would eventually be subsumed by a single mobile device - most likely sold to us by Apple. But that is not happening. I travel frequently with my laptop, iPad, iPhone, pocket camera, and even a GPS. Oh, and I’ve started wearing an iPod Nano as a watch and I bought a Kindle. That’s not convergence! The reason why I do this is simple - for specific tasks, an optimized device is far better than similar functionality in my smart phone. For example - data roaming fees are the reason for using a GPS while my tiny Canon takes pictures far better than the iPhone and the Kindle is a better reader. For 2012, I predict that we will see even more divergence like this. The device manufacturers have to differentiate and they will be bringing out devices that will be compelling enough to carry multiple ones. Is anybody at RIM reading this? There is a niche opening up for secure, enterprise grade devices, folks...

8. HTML5 won’t kill apps
Talking about mobility, 2011 marked the beginning of not just the post-PC era but also the post-Flash world. With Flash dead (yes, technically only ‘mobile Flash’ is dead but that really means that Flash is dead) and with Silverlight the likely next victim, all hopes are turning to HTML5 as the panacea for all mobility-related problems. The biggest of the problems being the fact that building native apps is getting costly with the number of mobile OS derivatives growing - particularly in the Android camp. Well, folks, I predict that HTML5 will not solve this issue anytime soon. Certainly not in 2012. In 2012, we will continue seeing native apps being built at a rapid pace. I have elaborated on my reasoning in my recent article. Those enterprise apps I have predicted for 2011 will keep coming in 2012.

9. Tipping point for analytics
There has been plenty of discussion about the need for content analytics in 2011 yet the adoption has been still fairly modest. Sure, the IBM Watson won on Jeopardy and lots of Web sites have added some analytical capabilities to increase their stickiness. But not many organizations use analytics to improve their productivity today - i.e. to help employees deal with the information overflow by applying automatic analytics and classification. I suspect that the price-performance ratio has been the problem so far - it takes way too much computing power to do anything meaningful with acceptable performance. After all, the Watson is a supercomputer! I predict that this will change in 2012. The technology is now good enough to derive significant benefits from analytics and that in 2012, we will start seeing a much broader adoption.

10. ECM, what’s next?
Lots has been said and written in 2011 about the end of the ECM era. Many vendors tried to distance themselves from Enterprise Content Management by trying to either coin new terms or by embracing broader alternatives. Not very successfully. Like it or not, the term ECM is still the one and only term that has been adopted to describe this space. In 2012, I predict that the search for the ECM replacement will continue and that at the end of 2012, we will be where we are today. Sure, there will be more consolidation and some vendors will be talking about subsuming their ECM acquisitions. There will also be vendors coining new terms like “Secure Social Experience” and “Content as a Service” and “ECM 3.0”. But none of that will stick. In December 2012, we will still call this space ECM. I hope I’m wrong on this one, by the way...

Well, here they are, my predictions. Please let me know where you agree and disagree. I sure hope that you disagree with at least some of them. Otherwise, my predictions would be safe and boring. After all, one of my favorite quotes comes from the great Mario Andretti:

“If everything seems under control, you are not driving fast enough!”

I wish you a great 2012. Start your engines and pedal to the metal!

Looking Back at My Most Popular Blog Posts in 2011

2011-12-26T21:32:00.000-08:00

As a technology veteran of twenty plus years, I cannot remember a time more exciting and turbulent than right now. Sure, when the Web first arrived in 1994/95, it was exciting except that there was not much to do on the Web back then. And the dotcom era was exciting except that the irrational exuberance was somehow making people think that Pets.com was a high tech company. The year 2011 has seen many interesting technology trends convert and deliver measurable benefits to our lives. Sure, we are probably in a bubble with LinkedIn, Groupon, and Zynga having gone public raising huge amounts of money. But have seen some massive changes that are probably real and permanent. Now, this is fun!

And as the year 2011 nears to end, the time has come to take a look at what happened - on this blog. The list below are the articles that have received the most hits in 2011. That alone is a wrong metric, of course, since the articles published in January had much more time to score hits than those published in December. But let’s not get stuck on technicalities - here are the top posts in 2011:

10. Struggles of a Professional iPhone User
Having switched to iPhone from a Blackberry in April, I have described many deficiencies related to business tasks in email, calendar, search, etc. Some of them are still valid but I love my iPhone.

9. BlackBerry PlayBook - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
I got to test the new PlayBook back in May and I wrote a pretty positive review. Some folks apparently didn’t agree with me since PlayBook was not much of a hit in 2011.

8. OpenText Acquires Metastorm
I only rarely write about my employer but people are usually taking interest in acquisitions and my blog allows me to share some insights and so these posts usually score pretty well. This one was published in February.

7. Testing Samsung Omnia Running Windows Phone 7
I don’t consider myself a great tester but as these devices were coming out, people were really interested in the reviews. And so I tested and shared my opinions - which I am good at doing!

6. Practical Gamification Use Case
This is a customer success story, describing the gamification deployment at OpenText. Gamification was a big topic in general and I felt compelled to write about it as I was able to experience it first hand and talk to the developers.

5. Who Will Own Enterprise Social Media?
By March, it was clear that every software company had some sort of social media initiative (‘social media’ was what we used to call ‘social business’ back then). In this post, I argued that we won’t be able to participate in more than a couple and that some of the vendors probably don’t stand a chance.

4. Why Do We Rename Products
In May, I stood up on my virtual soap box and explained the rationale behind some of the marketing decision that follow acquisitions. Lots of folks were interested in the answers and Lee Dallas from EMC even disagreed with me in his counter-post Why Re-Branding Makes Us Crazy.

3. HTML5 vs Native Apps
In this post, I argued that while HTML5 is great and will gain significant adoption, it will not become the panacea that will save the world from the need to develop native apps for multiple operating systems. That was in September and in December I even got to argue this point at the Gilbane Conference in Boston. That was great fun!

2. Why We Acquired Global 360
In July, following the February acquisition of Metastorm, OpenText acquired another BPM vendor Global 360. The title alone compelled many readers to find out what the answer was, not to mention that this was a pretty big acquisition anyway.

1. Content Management Predictions for 2011
This post was a surprising winner by a huge margin. Even more interesting was the fact that it was getting hits throughout the year, sometimes becoming one of the top posts for a given month. Of course that can only mean one thing:

...I will start the year 2012 off with my Content Management Predictions for 2012. Stay tuned and thanks for reading my blog. Happy New Year and all the best in 2012!

Can Social Software Ever Replace Email?

2011-12-21T20:42:00.000-08:00

According to Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, the year 2011 was supposed to be the year when email finally died. Or at least the year when email was taken over by social software. Yet it didn’t happen and we all still email today. Sure, there are kids out there sending each other messages via Facebook but nobody has given up their enterprise email in favor of Facebook yet. So, why is it that email isn’t dead?

Well, it is because email has our share of attention. Email offers one-to-one or one-to-many communication which is what enterprises need and we are all programmed to go to our email several times a day to check what’s happening. Our email inbox serves not only as a communication terminal but also as a reminder of what to do next, what to put on our task list, what meetings to prepare for, and what’s going on. Email is a go-to destination and it gets our share of attention.
Facebook is also a go-to destination. That’s one of the secrets behind Facebook’s success. We go to Facebook often several times a day to see what’s going on. Unfortunately, Facebook is a very consumer-oriented service and does not lend itself for enterprise use outside of marketing communications. In fact, many enterprises are rather paranoid about the possibility of their enterprise communication happening on Facebook.
Twitter too is a go-to destination which gets our share of attention and Twitter has established itself for business use. But due to it’s one-to-all type of communication, it lacks the core concept of security - communication to those I chose and not those who happen to be listening right now.
Is Google+ a go-to-destination? I’m not sure that’s happened yet and the jury seems to be still out. But given the growth in number of users, it is likely to happen. Is LinkedIn a go-to-destination? For some, perhaps. The LinkedIn features such as direct messages and private groups may even meet the one-to-one and one-to-many communication requirements of the enterprise but no company has switched off email in favor of LinkedIn yet. Or in favor of anything else, the recent PR coup by Atos notwithstanding.

Thierry Breton, Atos CEO, recently banned email in his company.

So, how about your enterprise deployment of social software? From what I am seeing, the adoption is very tribal today. There tend to be groups in the enterprise that embrace it and experience a high degree of adoption but also groups that ignore it. And herein lies the challenge of replacing email.
What we like about email and social software is the fact that it enables asynchronous communication. The beauty of asynchronous communication is the fact that it is not disruptive. The challenge with synchronous communication such as the telephone, Skype, or even instant messaging is its disruptive nature that automatically limits the number of conversations possible. When I’m in a meeting, I can’t be on the phone. Email, on the other hand, can wait for me to respond. That works!
For an asynchronous communication tool to be successful, it has to gain a share of our attention and significant adoption. Email not only has our attention, but it has reached a mind-blowing adoption that is nearly 100%. On top of that, email works the same across our professional and personal needs. We may use separate accounts but it works the same and when we make a mistake and cross the boundaries, it is usually forgiving. The share of attention and the high adoption make email a top go-to destination for all of us.
Social software has the possibilities to get there, but it is a long row to hoe. Email didn’t reach its adoption in a day and not even in a year. Not long ago, managers used to have assistants to handle their email. It took our parents or grand-parents years to embrace email. Even today, email is subject to a relatively formal protocol starting with “Hello …” and ending with “Kind regards”. For better of worth, we have established rules about who can email whom and with what degree of urgency. We had to develop pretty solid spam filters to avoid being eaten alive by unwanted email. It took years and we did all of that to get the email adoption where it is today.
On top of that, email has another useful feature. Since the mid 90s when email met the Internet, email addresses became universal identifiers. Your email address is usually a relatively simple derivative of your real name and yet uniquely and unambiguously identifies you. That’s why your email address is used as a login on a myriad of online services - from your bank to Facebook. All that has propelled email’s 100% adoption.
100% adoption, or even 80% adoption is not a small feat. Until any alternative communication technology gets there, we cannot talk about the death of email.

2011 Predictions Scorecard

2011-12-13T20:28:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of this year, I published my 2011 Content Management Predictions. I received a lot of good feedback on this article, which has since become by far my most popular post this year. But now, the time has come to see how I did on my predictions. I do believe that it is the responsibility of anyone making predictions to openly review their results. So, here it comes:

1. Mobile devices as a primary interface
I predicted that in 2011, we would see people using their mobile devices as their primary way to access content applications and data. I found my first evidence of this just a few weeks later when I took a picture of my co-worker using his smartphone while sitting at his desk. This prediction has become a reality. Perhaps not as much for smartphones but certainly for the iPad. Many of us started bringing the iPad - and just the iPad - to meetings, conferences and business trips and this trend continues to grow with every additional iPad sold.

I have further predicted that the content management vendors will start building their apps with the “mobile first” principle. This too I see happening now. Many content management vendors now offer mobile apps and increasingly, I am seeing capabilities developed for mobile devices first. In fact many apps are only really valuable when used on mobile devices - file sharing, note-taking, social media, etc. OpenText Tempo is a good example of such an app - secure document sharing and synchronization between multiple devices built as “mobile first”.
Verdict: Hit, Score: 1/1

2. End of MS Office monopoly
Back in January, I predicted that in light of free alternatives, Microsoft would lose its dominance over the office productivity applications. In the course of the year, there has been a lot of Microsoft bashing in the media and indeed, Microsoft is increasingly seen playing defense rather than offence. Google Docs is probably the most tangible threat and I see increasingly people using Google Docs (BTW, I’m writing all my blog posts in Google Docs). However, it would be too soon to declare victory for Google Docs or any other Office alternative. In the enterprise, little has happened this year and Microsoft Office remains strong. I’d say that I was simply wrong on this one.
Verdict: Miss, Score: 1/2

3. eDiscovery has gone SOX
My prediction was that in 2011, the excitement around eDiscovery would fizzle away the same way the Sarbanes-Oxley problem has eventually dwindled after a lot of initial publicity a decade ago. Sure, the problem of presenting electronic evidence upon a subpoena isn’t going away. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act didn’t go away either, even if Senator Paul Sarbanes announced his retirement a few weeks ago. But time has taken the mystery out of the problem and most companies have figured out what they need to do and have moved on to solving the next set of problems. That was my prediction and I maintain that it happened. The problems of the year 2011 included anything from social business and mobility to analytics and big data. eDiscovery isn’t that hot anymore.
Verdict: Hit, Score: 2/3

4. Wikileaks would be the next SOX
My next prediction was related to content security which made headlines when Wikileaks published sensitive government information and pre-announced that the banks would be the next target. This issue has created plenty of concern and publicity, particularly in situations where the weak link wasn’t an external attack but an internal leak instead. In the course of 2011, Wikileaks itself has gone a bit quiet with Julian Assange busy fighting his extradition case instead of stirring up trouble. However, the insurgence of the Arab Spring of 2011 has been widely credited to some of the information Wikileaks published and the sheer consequences of Wikileaks support my prediction. Security is back in the spotlight particularly in the world of mobility, social media and cloud computing. I’m calling it a hit and I’m sure that Mr. Mubarak or the late Mr. Gaddafi would agree.
Verdict: Hit, Score: 3/4

5. Experience will go from browser to apps
In this prediction, I’ve argued that the content management vendors will follow in the footsteps of the consumer market where users have overwhelmingly embraced native apps in favor of web browser-based application. The vendors were expected to start developing apps and just like the consumer apps, the enterprise apps were expected to become more atomic - focused on a relatively narrow functionality or a single task. Well, most vendors started building apps and those apps are for the most part more narrowly focused but I have not seen the kind of atomic functionality yet I had in mind - apps focused on a specific task such as file travel expenses, or submit purchase requisition. I still believe that we are headed towards the “app-tastic” world as the OpenText CTO Eugene Roman likes to call it, but we are not quite there yet. I’d say this one is too soon to call and I give it half a point.
Verdict: Too soon to call, Score: 3.5/5

6. Social media will pass the peak [of inflated expectations]
This was a pretty straight forward prediction about social media following the Gartner hype-cycle model. As a result, we should have passed over the peak of inflated expectations towards the trough of disillusionment. This has happened in 2011. Not in the consumer world where Facebook and Twitter are still growing strong but it is happening in the enterprise. Many enterprises are learning that just because you’ve built a social site, it doesn’t mean that the employees are using it in ways that stimulate corporate effectiveness. The companies are learning that this is more about change management and corporate culture than about the technology. On the technology front, the vendors are not making any money on social software this year. Just check out the S1 filing from Jive which is supposedly the most successful of the social vendors. Sure, Jive has just gone public today and raised a ton of cash but their solution is already becoming obsolete. The customers who want on-premise social software can get it as a feature from their existing vendors (i.e. Salesforce or OpenText) and those who want it in the cloud get it for free from Yammer or Box.
Verdict: Hit, Score: 4.5/6

7. Case Management will catch on
This prediction was about the expected success of case management and how it will differentiate from business process management (BPM). This was probably my least controversial prediction since case management was already happening at the time. And it continues happening with some vendors delivering separate product lines for BPM and for case management. My employer OpenText was probably the best proofpoint for this prediction coming true when we acquired a BPM vendor Metastorm first and a case management vendor Global 360 a few months later. Case management is catching on - not much argument here, I suppose.
Verdict: Hit, Score 5.5/7

8. Web sites and portals need refurbishing
Next, I predicted a strong year for Web content management (WCM). The space has evolved in 2011 by changing its mission from just managing Web content to Web experience management (WEM), and most recently to customer experience management (CEM). I reasoned that this growth would be fueled by the pent up demand of marketing departments who didn’t have the budget for innovation during the recession. That’s very much what I have seen happening in 2011. Most WCM vendors in the space were doing well and even Oracle decided to jump in by acquiring FatWire. In addition, we have seen marketing departments emerge as a key buying audience for WCM software (and WEM and CEM) which is another proofpoint that I was right on this one.
Verdict: Hit, Score: 6.5/8

9. Enterprises won’t rush to public cloud
This prediction was arguing that while the cloud remains a hot trend and we will see a lot of adoption in the consumer space, enterprises won’t rush to the public cloud. Note that I was explicit about public cloud since I consider the adoption of a private cloud a no-brainer. Judging this prediction is a tough call. I believe that what happened in 2011 is that enterprise indeed didn’t rush to the public cloud but at the same time, enterprise users have done so. This is the effect of consumarisation and I see enterprises having to deal with this issue while accepting that you can’t stop the tidal wave.

The users - their employees - are using cloud based services from Dropbox and Skydrive to Yammer. The enterprises - the enterprise IT and legal departments - are not happy with that and are looking for alternatives. This is a volatile situation and the data suggests that the corporate world is divided about 50:50 on this issue. Half of the companies want to be draconian and put the end to this while the other half is looking for a peaceful way to let the users decide without compromising enterprise security and legal concerns. This is perhaps another prediction that is too soon to call.
Verdict: Too soon to call, Score 7/ 9

10. There will be more consolidation in ECM
Boy was I right on this one. Just consider some of the companies that were acquired in 2011: FatWire, Endeca, ATG, Iron Mountain (ECM assets), CA Technologies (ECM assets), Autonomy, Metastorm, Global 360, weComm, Operitel, Alterian, EchoSign, and many others. This was perhaps the busiest year the ECM market has ever seen.
Verdict: Hit, Score: 8/10

I wish I had predicted the power of consumerization back in January. That is the most glaring trend that happened in 2011 and I didn’t predict it. Consumerisation impacts mostly mobility which I had on my list but also includes the adoption of apps and cloud based services which I didn’t have on it.

But, 8 out of 10 hits isn’t bad even if two of them were too early to call. What do you think? Of course you may see some of the results differently but that’s the beauty of qualitative predictions. If you do, please do comment. In the mean time, I will write my Content Management Predictions for 2012.

Amazing Accessories for iPhone and iPad

2011-12-05T18:48:00.000-08:00

The other day, I found myself in an electronic section of a department store and I noticed an entire shelf of accessories for the iPad and iPhone. Since we are in the middle of the Christmas shopping season, I have decided to devote my blog post to the lighter topic of amazing things you can use your iPad or iPhone for.

Most iPad and iPhone owners already have all kinds of chargers, docks, mounts, cases, speakers and keyboards and I will not be discussing those. Instead, I want to feature a bunch of interesting hardware add-ons that truly extend the use cases of the platform into previously unexpected applications.

Fitness
- Heart Monitor
Wahoo makes an ANT+ add-on (hardware) that communicates with the chest strap and monitors your heart rate while running. Wahoo also makes a similar monitor for biking.

- Blood Pressure Monitor
iHealth makes a blood pressure measuring system that keeps your history in an iPhone app.

- Scale
The scale from Withings gathers info such as weight, fat, muscle and body mass index and sends it to your iPhone via wi-fi network.

Photo
- Photo accessories
An amazing set of accessories from Photojojo can add filters and lenses to the iPhone camera and some of them can even turn it into an SLR camera.

- Microscope
This contraption by Brando feels like a square peg in a round hole but, it promises to turn your iPhone into a microscope at a very reasonable price.

Kids
- RC toys
The HELO TC helicopter by Griffin Technology uses the iPad as the remote control. Not bad, actually.

- Baby monitor
The baby monitor by iBaby allows you to see the baby on an iPad or iPhone.

- iPad toys
Disney produced a series of toys called AppMATes that interact with a iPad application. They look like the characters from Cars 2 which alone makes this game pretty cool.

Music
- iRig
This amazing gadget connects your electric guitar with an iPad and an amplifier and produces sound effects like a whole set of sound distortion pedals.

- Piano
The Piano Apprentice by ION turns your iPad into a pretty smart musical instrument.

- Scratch Mixer
Feeling like mixing some tunes for your next party? The Jensen DJ Scratch Mixer will help! I should perhaps also mention the Soulo karaoke system and the ION iCade at this time.

- Arcade
A gizmo that turns an iPad into an Arcade game machine? Atari!

Business
- Square
Credit card payments for everyone! Since receiving payments is still surprisingly difficult in the US, the Square solution s finally giving the little man a chance to solve this problem.

- Pico Projector
If you make your living by giving presentations to small groups of people - i.e. customer meetings - the combination of iPhone with Keynote and any of the pico projectors is something to consider!

- Radar detector
Cobra iRadar uses the iPhone as a display. Well, what can I say? Drive safely, folks!

You must admit these things are cool aren't they? What's amazing is that they all take the iPhone and iPad into new areas of applications which Apple has perhaps never envisioned. That's the sign of a true platform.

Merry Christmas!

Are You Ready for the Cloud?

2011-11-28T20:14:00.000-08:00

Cloud computing has been the marketing topic of 2011. You could hardly attend a conference without being bombarded by predictions of how cloud computing is going to revolutionize our technology landscape. Indeed, having your data in the cloud is quickly becoming a necessity in the time when we are dividing our computer time among multiple devices.

Yet companies have been a bit more conscientious rushing to the cloud. Sure, there have been stories about many users and departments signing up for various cloud-based services such as collaboration, file-sharing, or project management. But not many enterprises have ripped out their existing on-premise solutions in favor of cloud-based offerings yet.

There are reasons why enterprises are careful. Security concerns are usually being mentioned as the top concern. The data in the cloud is not under your control and so it is less secure, right? Actually, I’m not sure I buy that argument. In fact, the cloud vendor most likely has better security in place than most enterprises could ever afford to deploy.

A much bigger issue is the data control and ownership. First, there is the issue with employee-owned devices that end up containing corporate data. In case of a device theft or employee departure, the company isn’t allowed to wipe the device and has no control over the data. That is a problem for corporate security and legal liability.

The second issue related to data ownership is the protection provided by the cloud service providers. Take Google Gmail, for instance, which is being used by many employees. The Section 11 of the Terms of Service contains the following paragraph:

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”

That clause alone made me think really hard about how much am I willing to use Gmail for communication with my tax accountant or investment advisor.

And then there is the Patriot Act issue which forces US based companies to comply with law enforcement requests to hand over your data. Dropbox’s Privacy Policy, for example, includes the following passage:

“We may disclose to parties outside Dropbox files stored in your Dropbox and information about you that we collect when we have a good faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary to (a) comply with a law, regulation or compulsory legal request; (b) protect the safety of any person from death or serious bodily injury; (c) prevent fraud or abuse of Dropbox or its users; or (d) to protect Dropbox’s property rights.”

“Good faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary” - that isn’t exactly the Swiss Banking Act, is it? While it may be the law in the US, it may also be beyond the tolerance threshold of many companies - particularly those from European countries that have a much less casual attitude towards data security and privacy.

As a result, companies are being very careful when taking advantage of cloud based services - particularly those that primarily cater to consumers. Such services will be likely supplemented by private-cloud based offerings that provide similar capabilities under the organization’s full control.

Also, a hybrid cloud approach might be used more often to address corporate concerns. One customer recently told me that they are moving their users to a cloud based email except for critical functions such as the financial and legal departments and their entire executive team.

This kind of approach may result in lower capital expenditures, but probably higher overall costs and complexity. Well, welcome to the Cloud Age!

When Algorithms Go Wrong

2011-11-21T20:50:00.000-08:00

Earlier this year, PC World published an interesting article about the key algorithms that rule the World Wide Web. These algorithms include everything from the Google search and Facebook friends stories, to Amazon’s recommendations and even the eHarmony’s matchmaking algorithm. Very interesting stuff, particularly when you consider the economic impact of such Internet services today.

One of the algorithms is the algorithm that drives ad presentment - the idea is to present you with the most relevant ad based on your profile date. Or, actually, with the ad that you are most likely to click on. But a few weeks ago, I had an interesting experience with Facebook. First, Facebook decided, for no particular reason, to present me with ads all in German. My first reaction was actually positive. Among the few bits of information that I have volunteered to Facebook is the fact that I studied at an university in Germany and occasionally, I even respond to a friend’s post in German. And so I thought that Facebook is so smart that it is trying to appeal to the ‘international-man-of-mystery’ side of me.

But last week, all the ads turned into French. Well, I do happen to get by in French but I am pretty sure that I have not volunteered any info about my French connection to Facebook. Sure, I have friends all over the world, including France, but that’s not enough for even the smartest algorithm to label me as a target for French ads. Besides, I could hardly be expected to act on an ad offering me a skydiving experience in France next weekend. Clearly, something has been going wrong with the Facebook algorithm.

When an algorithm serving ads goes wrong, it is perhaps a laughable matter. After all, nobody gets hurt, right? Well, nobody, except for the companies that paid a ton of money for their ads to hit the right audiences. There have been plenty stories in the past about the innocent looking algorithm changes in Google that end up having a devastating effect on many businesses. If you build your online business that depends on the organic Google search driving your traffic, you can find yourself very quickly out of business when that stops working.

With their tremendous reach, it is perhaps time for the Web's Major League players to start realizing the economic power they have. With thousands and often millions of companies depending on them, Google, Facebook, Amazon etc. have to take their responsibility seriously.

This responsibility starts with the profile data integrity, customer privacy, information security and also the algorithm dependability. Algorithm changes can be very controversial as we've seen when Klout changed its algorithm a couple of weeks ago. It’ one thing to gamble with your own fortune, quite another thing to gamble with the fortunes of those who depend on you. Too many livelihoods are at stake. Abusing this responsibility may be perhaps the greatest risk Internet businesses face today.

The Future Upon Us

2011-11-20T08:51:00.000-08:00

All the innovation and converging technology trends will likely have a major impact on what we can do but also on our culture, our behavior, our ways of interacting with each other and with the technology itself. This presentation discusses some of such changes that we need to get ready for.

This a narrated recording of the presentation I have delivered as an OpenTalk on November 17, 2011 at the OpenText Content World in Orlando, FL.

The Future Upon Us - OpenTalk

More PowerPoint presentations from Lubor Ptacek

I Want My iDishwasher

2011-11-12T20:12:00.000-08:00

For years now, the world has been raving about the success of Apple products. Not just the computer platforms iMac, iPad and iPhone but also gadgets such as iPod and Apple TV have enjoyed a phenomenal success. Most pundits and consumers agree that the design, user experience and ease-of-use are key factors to their success.

For months now, the world is expecting the next line of devices from Apple that will surely yet again turn an established industry upside down. The device the iTV, or at least that’s what we think it will be called, is supposed to be an Internet-enabled TV set, no doubt seamlessly integrated with the iTunes store and all the other Apple gadgets in my house. iTV will most likely be a runaway success in an industry with many players, no differentiation and cut-trout margins. Apple will apply its magic and a boring TV set will become a must-have gadget at double the price of a regular TV set from Sony or Panasonic. My wife - who is not really the type of geek I am - is already planning on where to set it up in our house.

But I am seriously hoping for more. Looking around my house, I see many devices and appliances that need the Apple magic really badly. In our kitchen, we have a modern stove. It has 22 buttons plus a 10-key numeric keypad, not counting the knobs for the gas burners. I don’t know what all of those buttons are for. Nobody knows. Basic tasks such as preheating the oven require multiple button sequences which is usually done by trial-and-error. This is the MS-DOS v2.0 equivalent of a stove. I want an iStove.

The iStove would have very simple controls, designed for what people do with a stove - cooking, baking, heating up food etc. The controls would be logically arranged and the operation would be easy to learn with no need of a manual. Think about the differences between the controls on the old MP3 players and the iPod. I want the iStove to be like the iPod.

What’s more, the iStove would be cool looking. It would become the central point of the kitchen. I would love it just like I love my iMac, iPad, iPhone, and the iPod Nano that I’m wearing like a watch.

I want more than just the iStove. I want the iDishwasher. We have a brand new dishwasher that we absolutely hate. I want a dishwasher from Apple that I could love. I also want the iRefrigerator, iWaterSoftener, iWasher, iDryer, and iFurnace. I don’t want any more mysterious buttons, knobs and dials. I don’t know what they do and I don’t want to be spending hours figuring it out. I just want those devices and appliances to work. That’s all.

I am very encouraged by Nest and their new learning thermostat designed by former Apple designers. I’m pretty sure I will buy one as soon as it’s available. My current thermostat is very sophisticated with many programmable options but it is a pain to control. It is so hard that we rarely bother and instead either suffer in the cold or waste money and energy on heating. I love the idea of an iThermostat.

The way Apple has shaken up one industry after another is great for us consumers. Many of these industries have been piling up cash for years without ever caring about the customer. The home appliance and consumer electronics are such industries. For years, they have been competing with each other on useless features like a glass-top range (which sucks, by the way). As a result, it takes my ultra-modern TV set almost two minutes to boot up - longer than it used to take those vacuum tubes to warm up. It’s time for the Apple magic to shake things up. I can’t wait and I will buy those gadgets!

Parallels between Document Capture and Voice Recognition

2011-11-07T20:39:00.000-08:00

I was doing some research about the history of document capture last week. As I was reading about the early imaging machines capable of scanning 30 checks or lottery tickets per second, I came to realize an interesting parallel between the world of document capture and voice recognition.

At first, the purpose of document capture was just creating a readable image of a paper document which could be electronically stored and shared. That alone was a big improvement in efficiency. The analogy in the audio world would be the creation of the MP3 standard which allowed us to make inexpensive recordings of music and share them easily via services such as Napster. Too easily, complained the entertainment industry over and over, until Apple came and took over their business.

The next milestone in image capture was optical character recognition (OCR) which allowed us to extract the text from the image and make it searchable. Intelligent character recognition (ICR) augmented these capabilities by extracting hand-written text. That was particularly important to those high-volume imaging systems processing millions of checks or lottery tickets. In the audio world, the OCR and ICR capabilities are akin to the speech recognition software such as Naturally Speaking by Nuance or IBM’s ViaVoice. The purpose of this software is to convert speech into searchable text - just like OCR.

OCR and voice recognition are both about searchable text

Finally, document capture evolved to the point where it became possible to automatically detect the document type through document recognition (i.e invoice, application, job application, or travel expenses) and subsequently extract the actual data value from the document. Not just text, but rather metadata fields such as billing address, date, total, or payment terms. As a result, document capture can be connected directly with process automation software such as workflow or business process management (BPM) to gain even greater efficiencies from automated document processing.

In the audio world, the analogous technology is voice control or the recently introduced personal voice assistant Siri by Apple. The idea of this software is to issue voice commands together with the dictation (voice-to-text capture). The commands can make the computer perform a task or a process step. Many phones understood basic voice operations such as “Call home” but those are just shortcut commands comparable to bar-codes and QR codes in the document capture world.

Understanding the meaning from natural language without learning predefined commands takes voice recognition to a different level. Such voice control has been featured in many sci-fi movies from Space Odyssey to Avatar but remains so far mostly in the experimental stage. Microsoft promised to ship a new version of Xbox with voice control for task such as movies or music search which could be extremely useful. Siri appears to be the first intelligent voice control-based software entering the mass market with capabilities such as scheduling appointments, searching for music, sending messages, or checking the weather.

The voice recognition technology has been following a similar innovation trajectory as document capture. Today, software such as Siri raises voice technology onto a level that is on par with the state of the art in document capture. It will be interesting to see what innovations will emerge in both of these worlds. In the mean time, we should practice the interaction with a computer in natural language because Voice Recognition is about to Re-Wire our Brains.

Compliance Starts with Explaining Why

2011-10-30T21:01:00.000-07:00

I’ve just finished reading a couple of books by Kevin Mitnick, the famous computer hacker and phone freak who, after serving some time in prison, eventually became a security consultant. In his books, Kevin not only describes how amazingly easy it was to dupe employees at various organizations to willingly grant him access to their systems, but he also provides many suggestions for corporate security policies and measures.

The one thing that becomes obvious from reading Mr. Mitnick’s books is that people will comply with policies much more willingly, when they are explained. Why is this policy in place? Don’t just mandate a screen saver with a password protection to increase your data security level. Explain to employees why they need it. People aren’t dumb. With the proper explanation, they will remember and more likely comply.

Whenever I’m flying, I notice how the air travel experience is filled with seemingly contradictory rules and regulations that come with no explanation. For example, I have to take my laptop out of the bag for a security check while all my other electronics, including the iPad, can stay in the bag. Why? During take-off and landing, I have to turn off all electronic devices even though I can’t really turn off my digital watch nor can I turn off my iPod Nano. Again, there is no explanation provided and I see more and more people simply ignoring the rule altogether.

I can see very similar challenges with enterprise compliance. The HR department makes employees take mandatory training on business ethics but rarely, is there any explanation provided as to why we are taking these course. The reason is probably not that the HR department suspects us to be taking bribes or contracting out work to our relatives. The reason is more likely that by making us take the training, the company reduces its own liability. That’s a good reason and the employees should be told.

The same thing happens with adding metadata, classifying content, and completing compliance related work steps. We create rules but rarely do we take the time to explain why. What benefit will the organization gain?

The results are often disappointing: poor quality, lack of consistency or simply a complete refusal. Such results become very costly for the organization and practically impossible to remedy after the fact. People don’t follow the rules because they were never really told why should they bother.

Yet the solution is often amazingly simple. Give your employees the rationale behind the rules and most of them will try to do the right thing. You may not get a 100% compliance nor the perfect quality but you are going to experience measurable improvements.

Because good compliance starts with explaining why.

Security Makes Things Hard

2011-10-25T20:08:00.000-07:00

Consumerization of the enterprise is sweeping the technology world today. Just look at all the unsupported iPads, iPhones, and Macs around your office. Employees are more and more frequently discovering that the cool technology they use at home can be used quite effectively in the office - with or without IT support. Enterprise software is not an exception.

Content management often gets compared with the consumer experience. No, I am not talking about the design elements of the user interface. Those are usually based on highly personal and often hard to define user preferences. I guess, some folks might even like the ribbons in Office... I’m talking about the interaction, the process of creating, collaborating on, sharing, and using content.

Take search, for example. How many times have we heard that we would like to see enterprise search be just like Google web search. But trust me, you don’t want it the same. On the Web, Google has it easy. It’s finding content that wants to be found. In fact, the content often really, really wants to be found. Some content owners want their content to be found so much that they spend millions of dollars on search engine optimization (SEO) and on Google ads to make sure their content can be found on the World Wide Web.

In the enterprise, nobody is search-engine optimizing their documents to make sure they can be found. You can also not pay Google to make sure your document called “Corporate Strategy” will be found every time somebody tries to search for those words. The search engines are working much harder to find the relevant content. Only metadata and proper classification can help - and most organizations struggle to handle metadata consistently. But wait, there is another major challenge in the enterprise: security.

All my Facebook friends could see this post...

For security reasons, we often don’t want every user to find every relevant content. In the enterprise, some users are not privy to certain information and thus they should not be able to find the documents. In fact, they should not even be able to see the document titles in the search results as the document names alone could give away too much information. Just imagine your employees finding a document titled “Corporate Restructuring”. To prevent that, the result set has to be filtered by permissions before sending it back to the requesting application.

This post on our internal deployment of OpenText Pulse was only visible to a few.

Another example that shows how content in the enterprise is different is social software. When you upload a file or link on Facebook, Facebook announces it to all your friends or followers. In the enterprise, that is yet again not acceptable. When I upload a file called “Acquisition Proposal”, only those of my coworker-followers who have the permission to see such a document should be alerted about it by the social software. You must not have to select a predefined group or circle of friends; it has to happen automatically - the software has to validate the user permissions before showing the alert to anyone.

Enterprise software is different. Security makes it much more difficult to expose the right information to the right people which is critical in the enterprise. Actually, I’d argue that security is quite important in the consumer space too and I hope that the technologies related to security and privacy make the jump from the enterprise to the consumer world. Consumerization of the enterprise need a bit of ‘enterprization of the consumer world’.

Voice Recognition Is About to Re-Wire Our Brains

2011-10-17T23:43:00.000-07:00

Voice-based data input to a computer is not a new idea. While the keyboard, mouse, and more recently, gestures, have been the primary way of interacting with computers, the idea of voice-based interaction is as old as the HAL 9000, the talking computer from Space Odyssey. Software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking (since 2005 owned by Nuance) or IBM’s ViaVoice have been around for almost two decades and let’s not forget the often infuriating Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) used by most telephone support departments today.

Voice recognition software stole the spotlight last week when Apple released its new iPhone 4S with built-in Siri software. Embedding voice recognition directly into the operating system is a major milestone and having it included in a mobile device makes perfect sense as we can see from the video commercial by Apple. Only the TV set is a device that needs voice control even more – I am still waiting for the kind of interaction Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) was using in the Back to the Future II movie. In fact, Siri for Apple TV is rumored to be on the way and Microsoft recently demonstrated voice-based movie search on Xbox 360.

So, how come we have not been talking to our computers for the last decade since the technology was there? Well, part of it was the accuracy of the recognition. When I used Naturally Speaking Back in the 90s, I had to train the software to understand me which was a lot of work for meager results. We all know the frustration with any IVR based system: “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Could you please try it again?”. And while Siri represents the next generation of voice recognition, plenty of stories about the funny results that its use can result in circulated on the Web immediately after the new iPhone was released.

Source: STST

With increased computing power and better software algorithms, the quality is becoming less of an issue. One day, the software might even understand dialects or foreign accents like mine. But I suspect that’s only part of the adoption challenge. The other part lies in our ability to express our thoughts verbally to a computer. Most of our verbal communication is not very straightforward and we even enjoy taking our time before coming to the point. In places where communication has to be clear and precise such as military orders, radio protocol, or business negotiations, it is only possible after many hours of training. Naturally, people don’t speak that way.

However, just some 30 years ago typical managers didn’t have computers on their desks. They would spend several hours each day responding to correspondence by dictating letters onto a tape which their secretaries would later transcribe on a typewriter and later on a word processor and eventually on a PC using Word Perfect. Another 10 years before that, the dictation was done in real-time and the secretary had to know short-hand to keep up. It took years before the PC made it to the manager’s desk. What amazes me today is that the managers were able to dictate complete letters in full, well articulated sentences.

For most of us, that’s not so easy anymore. Today, we have a generation of PC users spoiled by the editing power at our fingertips. Most of us, knowledge workers, formulate our sentences as we write them and since it is so easy to rephrase any sentence or start from the beginning, we do it all the time. I’ve been observing many people doing this and I know that I am not alone. Most humans, even professional writers, would have a difficult time dictating in complete sentences. Giving commands to the computer such as search requests is one thing but authoring text via voice recognition requires a new skill set that is underdeveloped in most of us today. We know from the past that we humans are capable of such skills but the last 30 years of PC revolution have re-wired our brains differently.

Now Siri and other voice recognition software may be starting a new era. An era where we can – and perhaps must - express ourselves verbally in a new way. Let’s see how it goes. [computer, strike last sentence] Ehm…

By the way, when is Siri going to be available on iPhone 4?

The Courage to Lead

2011-10-09T22:33:00.000-07:00

What else could be the topic of my blog post this week other than paying tribute to Steve Jobs. All the writers have written countless obituaries this week about this great man, his life and his work. Today, I want to write about a particular aspect of Apple’s strategy - Steve Jobs’ strategy - that has really impressed me over the years.

It is the ability to pursue the future by letting go of the past.

When a new technology arrives that is capable of replacing an old one, the typical approach for a technology company is to hedge its bets. Start embracing the new while continuing to support the old. You don’t want to disrupt anyone, you don’t want to leave anyone behind, you want to smoothly transition from one technology to another. That means that for several years and revisions, your product comes with duplicate, redundant technologies to make this smooth transition possible.

Image: Jonathan Mak

For example, many PCs today still ship with a built-in 56kb modem even though hardly anyone knows how to use dial-up to access the Internet anymore. But you have to support the modem in case some grandma in Minnesota still doesn’t have DSL. After all, she might select someone else’s make of PC and that would be bad, right?

That’s not how Apple operates. That’s not how Steve Jobs pursued the future. In his world, when a new technology comes around that it better than the old one, you just go for it. You want to speed up the transition. You want to drag everybody with you, even that grandma in Minnesota. A leader has to lead and Steve Jobs never hesitated to do so.

When the first Macintosh came on the market in 1984, it had a graphical user interface (GUI) instead of the then usual command line interface. There was no command line anymore on the Mac - everything was done though the GUI. Windows 7, in contrast, still has a command line interface available just in case you feel like typing “C:>ipconfig /renew Local Area Connection 2”. OK, the "cmd" program is bit more hidden now than it used to be, but Windows has opted for a long smooth transition from DOS. Apple just went for it.

The Mac also came equipped with the relatively new 3 and ½ inch diskette drive and no longer with the then much more common 5 and ¼ inch drive. The 3 ½ “ diskettes were far superior to the “floppy disks” but PCs would be shipping for another decade with dual drives for both 3 ½“ and 5 ¼“ diskettes. Again, most PC makers opted for a smooth transition while Apple just went for it.

Shortly after that, Steve Jobs was famously ousted from Apple and not many bold moves happened until he came back. In the mean time, he became a billionaire by taking Pixar public and eventually selling it to Disney. Then he also sold NeXT to Apple and in 1997, he was back at the helm.

When the iMac shipped in 1998, it came without a diskette drive. No diskettes, only a CD-ROM drive (later a DVD drive) and a USB slot. That was bold and controversial back then. How are people supposed to exchange files without diskettes? Using the network or a flash memory wasn’t the way people usually did it back in 1998. For many more years after, that PCs used to come with a diskette drive and most people had a box of diskettes next to their PC (if you are over 30, you still have that box somewhere in the attic, just admit it).

In 2001, the iPod was launched with some amazingly bold limitations. It would only play files in the MP3 format (and in the Apple Lossless format which I am a big fan of). Remember, back in 2001, there was a plethora of audio formats used to play music including Microsoft’s WAV, Real Audio format (.RA), Sun’s AU format and others. But Apple said, forget it, we go with MP3 which was popularized by Napster and we all followed. Most of the other formats are disappearing today.

The other famous format bet that Apple made, is the bet against Flash on mobile devices. We are still not quite sure how this one ends up but the history shows that Apple usually gets its way.

Talking about mobile devices, I have to mention the iPad. When it first launched in 2010, it drew plenty of skepticism for coming only with a wireless Internet connection. No diskettes, no CDs, no DVDs, no USB slot...heck, not even a SD card slot. Many of us are still moaning that we want at least a SD card slot but we are happily buying our iPads anyway.

My final example is the Apple TV 2. When it was released in September 2010, Apple decided that the old way of hoarding content in your home library is no longer sustainable as the HD movies are too big. And so they shipped the new Apple TV without a drive for storing movies. Instead, renting is the way to go - the only way to go. Last week, Apple announced their iCloud service, and so I suspect that a cloud-only music player might be coming soon and we will stop hoarding music too.

From a vendor point of view, all these moves were incredibly courageous and for most vendors they would be considered huge gambles, well beyond the comfort level. Yet they all follow the principle that Apple and Steve Jobs embodied for decades - decide what’s best for your customers and have the courage to deliver it. Lead, don’t ask for directions! Even if it takes courage to lead.

To pursue the future, it is good to let go of the past.

Stay foolish.

High Fidelity Pictures

2011-10-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

Today, I will discuss some exciting innovations in the world of photography. My interest was awakened by a recent article in The Economist titled Cameras Get Clever. It described some of the leading edge developments in the field of photography. Among them was a technology called high dynamic range (HDR) which can enhance your everyday pictures by overlaying three separate shots and then using the processing power of the camera to get the best exposure from each one of them.

Basically, a normal shot will have areas that are either too dark or too bright because the camera has to set the exposure based on a compromise across the entire image or a selected area. With HDR, the camera takes three separate shots within fractions of a second - one with exposure for the high tones, one for the low tones and one for middle tones. Then, the camera overlays these three pictures using algorithms that combine the best exposure from all three shots. The result are images that have a much better balance of tones and colors than the single shot based on a compromise. Or, do they?

Well, it was easy to test since the standard camera built into iPhone has the HDR feature today. Not many people know it but there is a button in the top center of the screen that allows you to turn on HDR which results in two pictures for each shot. One is a “normal” picture based on the compromise exposure while the other one is improved by HDR. Here is my test, using our dog as a model:

This is a 'normal' picture with a compromise-based exposure

This is the same picture with a high dynamic range (HDR)

Now, which shot is better? The HDR shot clearly has a better balance. The dog’s face is not just black and white, it has some tone depth in it (number of shades). That comes at the cost of contrast and color richness which we can see in the normal picture. The problem is that on a bright sunny day, the colors really were very bright and the contrast was very strong. And, the dog is black and white, not gray. I checked.

That leads me to my point. With all the power of modern camera and post-processing software such as Photoshop, Aperture, iPhoto, or Picasa to name just a few, who is to decide that the picture I take should have more depth in the low or high tones? Why are the colors all wrong in artificial light? Why are the shots on a beach often overexposed? I understand all the technical issues behind it but what I want is a picture that looks exactly the way reality did.

Back in the late 60s, the electronics industry came up with a notion of high fidelity (hi-fi) which meant that the music you heard from your record, tape, radio, or CD was supposed to sound exactly as in the studio. What I want is hi-fi for pictures. I want the assurance that my picture will look the way I see the real world in that very moment.

Sure, there will be artists - and consumers - who will want to distort the reality for special effect just like there are artists who feel that they have to add a dramatic sky into every picture. That is the right of any author and it should always remain that way. But 99% of all pictures taken are not meant to be art. They are meant to visually capture reality. The real reality. My tiny little (yet incredibly powerful) camera is full of features that can alter the picture - from color accent to fish-eye effect. But there is no button for “authentic picture”.

Go ahead and test the HDR functionality on your iPhone. Features like HDR are important because they allow us to push the boundaries. Some of the innovations in the world of photography are just incredible and I can’t wait to use them. When I read the article mentioned above, I got very excited about Lytro and other technologies. The impact of these technologies could be amazing. Just like the change that digital cameras brought upon us when they replaced film.

As for my test above, I prefer the “normal” picture because it looks more like the actual scene I remember.

Kindle Fire - The Price Is Right

2011-09-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

Today, Amazon announced the long awaited Kindle Fire, a new tablet based on the Android mobile operating system. While the announcement was expected, the aggressive price has caught many by surprise. $199 for an Android-based tablet makes it the most aggressively priced tablet on the market. But is that the right price? Let’s take a closer look!

The $199 Kindle Fire could be a game changer

The entire tablet market should be grateful to HP for having recently conducted the largest price elasticity of demand (PED) test ever. If you remember, HP launched their TouchPad with the base price of $499.99. They reportedly manufactured 270,000 of the TouchPads, but after several months of trying, they had sold less then 10% of their inventory (25,000). After pulling the plug on the device, they sold the remaining inventory within hours for $99 a piece.

Being a marketer (and a techno geek), I actually tried to compute the price elasticity of demand for the TouchPad, coming up - as expected - with a high negative number. I got -549, but it’s been many years since business school (note: yes Professor, I have simplified my case by ignoring any substitutes, necessity factor, purchase power, brand loyalty, blah, blah, blah...doesn’t matter in this case). That low of a number means that the price is highly elastic which in turn means that buyers strongly respond to price changes. Duh. It also means that to optimize revenue (or better to grab as much market share as possible), you have to price the product near its marginal cost. Again, not a surprise - you make something and you want to sell as much of it as possible, you keep the price as low as possible to the cost of making it. Duh.

The cost of making the iPad is approximately $229 and we have to assume that Amazon could be in the same range. They can probably sell similar volumes as Apple has and thus have a similar negotiating power with their suppliers. The Kindle Fire might be a tad cheaper to manufacture with less memory and a smaller size. That suggests that at $199, Amazon is pricing the device at or just below cost - as my little price elasticity test suggests.

BTW, if you dismiss my simple price elasticity calculation and instead want to believe the efficient markets theory, you should remember that the discounted TouchPad was selling on eBay for $250. That seams to be the optimal price point at which the demand and supply clear. Even if Amazon is losing $50 on each Kindle as the Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster suggests, it doesn’t matter. Amazon is not looking for any margin contribution from the Kindle Fire (or any Kindle). They are looking for market share and units sold - eyeballs. The margin comes from the content which Amazon can sell to the people who have their devices.

This is also the reason why the other Android vendors such as Samsung, Acer, HTC, LG, Dell, etc cannot play this game. Even if they can match the cost of manufacturing their devices, which I doubt as their volumes are not anywhere near the millions of iPads Apple sold and the millions of Kindle Fires that Amazon is likely to sell, they still need the devices to generate positive margin contribution. They don’t have any content to sell to offset that. Apple, on the other hand, is sitting in the perfect spot today by getting margin contribution from both, the content and the devices. Beat that, … [everybody else]!

The content is critical. The Nook by Barnes&Noble is a comparable reader to the Kindle Fire and it has been on the market for several months now, priced at $250. But since B&N doesn’t have anywhere near the reach of Amazon with its online store, the device hasn’t made a dent into the market shares. Amazon’s new Kindle Fire is no slam dunk but given the success of the original Kindle, we have to assume that they are now a serious player. This is particularly true given the aggressive price of the device with an entire content ecosystem under their control - anything from e-books, magazines, to music and movies.

And so what will happen next? Amazon Kindle Fire is likely going to grab some significant market share in the tablet market. Apple may experience some pricing pressure but will still have the benefit of the Apple brand and user experience - the same brand that permits Apple to charge a premium on their iMac and MacBook computers. While the prices might come down a little, I wouldn’t expect any $199 iPads anytime soon.

All other manufacturers are in trouble. Microsoft must quickly deliver a tablet at all costs because with Kindle Fire, there is another runaway tablet on the market using zero code from Microsoft. All the Android vendors, except for Motorola, who’s now engaged to Google, have even more reason to reconsider their Android bet. They are going to be forced into a price war with Amazon which they can’t win given Amazon’s scale and pricing power. Switching into the Microsoft camp might be the only sustainable move left for them. But the longer Microsoft waits, the less market share will be left to grab. As for RIM, the PlayBook looks like an official failure now and their options are shrinking fast...

Customizations - Heaven or Hell?

2011-09-25T20:57:00.000-07:00

There are many traits that make enterprise software different from consumer software or even software packages used by small organizations. Scalability, security, and the ability to integrate with other software usually come to mind. But none of them are as polarizing as the ability to customize enterprise software deployments.

The idea is pretty simple. As organizations compete with each other, they want to tailor the deployed solutions to match their business processes and other organization-specific needs. Enterprise software vendors usually design their software in a way that allows for a significant amount of customization with technologies such as modular architecture, web services, application programming interface (API) and software development kits (SDK).

You might think that all of this is going away in the new world where software is delivered as a service (SaaS). It is certainly true for the SaaS software that targets the small and medium sized businesses or simple generic applications. But if we consider the leader in SaaS - Salesforce.com - as the sign of the things to come, we must realize that most of the Salesforce deployments today are being heavily customized.

Customizations are important. In fact, a big part of the appeal of open source software is the ability to significantly customize it; even re-write entire functionality modules given that the developers have the actual source code. Of course, customizations matter in the world of commercial ‘closed source’ software just as much.

Customizations, however, come at a price. Not only does a typical enterprise deployment often require an investment into professional services that comes at a multiple of the cost of the software licenses, customizations also carry a significant hidden cost.

Every time the software goes through an upgrade cycle, the customizations have to be upgraded as well. There is no easy way around it even if the vendor provides tools to make the work easier. Those are your customizations, they are a one-off type of software and nobody but you can upgrade them. Often the work to migrate the customizations can be significant. If the customizations actually contain significant amounts of original code, migrating them may be akin to a complete re-write.

Consequently, customers tend to struggle to keep up with the vendors who are trying to maintain the pace of innovation. It is important, that the customers are allowed to do that - not to keep up. The ability to skip a version is becoming a critical requirement for enterprise software. Many vendors handle it by providing the notion of safe-harbor releases that ensure that from here, you can move to the next level at your own pace.

In the end, there is no magical solution. Customers shouldn’t avoid customization because they do need the competitive advantage that highly customized software can provide. In many industries such as insurance or financial services, there is very little differentiation possible on the product side. Car insurance is just car insurance and mortgage is just a mortgage. Only the customer experience and the process efficiency can differentiate competitors. Those differentiators require customized software. But customers have to think beyond the customizations of the current release. The ease of migrating customizations is one of the key issues overlooked by many vendors in their slick demos.

Consumarization of BPM

2011-09-18T19:15:00.000-07:00

Business process management (BPM) is a high growth market that delivers significant return-on-investment to customers who deploy these solutions to improve their efficiency. Still, many people think that BPM is just a boring back-end technology. I know that hipness lies in the eye of the beholder but I’d argue that social media or gamification are getting more attention than back-end technologies such as data warehousing, archiving, or BPM.

There are several new trends in BPM that make it just as exciting as Jive Software except much more profitable. One of the trends is social BPM which employs social networking capabilities to allow for better decision-making in business processes. Long gone is the era of business processes that attempted to cover every single permutation of possible conditions to route the task in a predetermined path. Too many exceptions were typically the result and, in the end, the majority of decisions are best done by humans. It is the social software that can quickly help to identify and get together the right experts to help them make a decision.

Another important trend in BPM is mobility. As much as mobile devices are becoming the primary user experience, not everything we do in the office has the same appeal for a mobile user. Reviewing or editing documents works well on a tablet but it becomes pretty tedious on a smartphone. Interacting with a business process on a smartphone, however, makes a lot of sense and it is exactly here where a lot of customers realize the greatest benefits from mobility. So many process steps used to sit idle, waiting for the user to get back to the office since the email-based alert didn’t provide enough context to make a decision. By taking BPM mobile, the process apps are easily tailored to make users very effective to handle any process tasks.

Even submitting travel expenses can be pretty cool

Finally, BPM is also moving to the cloud. Besides the obvious appeal of shortening the deployment cycles by hosting the BPM software as a service, BPM can also benefit from making its functionality available to users easily. In any business process, it can happen that a particular expert needed for a specific task cannot participate since he or she doesn’t have access to the system. The cloud based approach makes BPM easily accessible. A good example of a cloud based activity is collaborative process design which frequently requires many stake holders to participate, even if some of them will not be involved in the actual process execution.

Clearly, the consumarization of the enterprise has reached BPM just like so many other disciplines of enterprise software. And who says that BPM is just a bunch of back-office technology? With the latest trends such as social BPM, mobility, and cloud, BPM is becoming rather hip. And it continues providing very compelling benefits such as higher efficiency, lower cost, or better quality.

HTML5 vs Native Apps

2011-09-10T21:06:00.000-07:00

The mobile world is split today into mobile apps and the mobile web. With some 400,000 apps available on the iTunes App Store today alone, it appears that native mobile apps are the preferred way of user experience on mobile devices. It might, however, not stay that way when HTML5 becomes widely adopted. Or will it?

The HTML5 standard - developed jointly by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) - is currently being heralded as the panacea for all problems ranging from the current limitations of browser-based applications to the support of mobile devices. Many developers - and by that I mean software companies of the likes of Microsoft - use HTML5 as the magical answer for all questions related to mobility. “What’s your platform strategy for your mobile apps”? “HTML5”!

Is it really going to be that easy?

HTML5-based LinkedIn

HTML5 promises many improvements including better handling of video, semantic elements and offline data support - all able to greatly advance the capabilities of web applications. From the user experience standpoint, it allows building sophisticated and appealing web applications - just check out the recently released mobile apps for LinkedIn or Vudu.

One of the greatest challenges in the development of mobile applications is the great variety of operating systems and types the mobile devices that a developer has to support. Even though the list got shorter since the demise of Symbian and webOS, the developers need to consider more than just supporting the top two leaders, iOS and Android, with BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 duking it out for the 3rd place.

Besides the fact that even the iOS and Android operating systems come in different flavors that may force developers to build multiple versions of their apps (i.e. iPhone vs iPad and the already numerous Android derivatives), the better apps also want to take full advantage of the hardware capabilities of the device. The obvious differences are the screen size and resolution. Going forward, however, the device manufacturers will increasingly compete with each other by adding many more device capabilities.

Already today, some devices have a front facing camera, rear facing camera, keyboard, accelerometer, GPS chip, USB port, memory card slots, and Bluetooth communication. In the near future, we can expect many more capabilities including near field communication (NFC) sensor, proximity sensor, biometric sensor, temperature sensor, and distance meters which are surely important for all golfers, right? The successful apps will have to take advantage of these capabilities and since every device is different, they will need to exist in multiple versions.

Could HMTL5 add support for such hardware features? No, HTML5 is probably not going to fix this problem. It is very unlikely to expect that the HTML5 standard could evolve to cover all such device specific innovations and even if it did, it wouldn’t be able to keep up with the pace of innovation. Yes, there will be successful apps and services that will make it big without using the device-specific hardware capabilities. But many apps will want to take advantage of everything the device has to offer and such apps will need to exist in multiple versions. And the native apps approach will be the only way to build such apps in the foreseeable future.

The Future of Interactive TV Has Arrived

2011-09-05T08:06:00.000-07:00

Back in January, I’ve decided to say ‘adios’ to my cable TV provider and “cut the cord”. As I have written about before, being a cord cutter is not that difficult as most of the movie and TV show programming is readily available from alternate sources such as iTunes, Boxee, Hulu, or directly from the TV networks’ sites. Most, except for live sports.

I can live without live sports to a certain degree but that doesn’t stop me from trying to find non-cable solutions. Particularly, I like watching the Grand Slam tennis tournaments and so I have been pleased to see that the online coverage has been on the rise this year. The current online live streaming coverage from the US Open, however, beats cable hands down.

Internet streaming on the TV screen (photo of my TV set)

The US Open video streaming is offered free of charge, supported by relatively unobtrusive advertising, and delivered by IBM which is not a big surprise since IBM has been sponsoring major sports events this way for years. However, the capabilities of the video stream, which IBM calls the US Open PointStream, go beyond anything we’ve seen in the past.

You chose which match to watch (screenshot)

For example, PointStream streams all matches live and you can interactively select which match you want to watch. Your regular cable TV makes that selection for you and you are not always going to like it since you will inadvertently miss certain matches. On PointStream, you are in charge of deciding which match you want to watch. In fact, if I want to watch two matches at a time, a picture-in-picture feature is available.

Picture-in-picture feature (screenshot)

PointStream goes far beyond that, though. With a mouse click, you can see the score results from all courts where play is under way. You can also see real time statistics and analysis for the match you are watching. IBM is effectively combining the video stream with a business intelligence type of analytics.

Real-time match analysis whenever you want (screenshot)

You can pause the play or rewind it - features we all love from Tivo. You can engage in online chat with other viewers. This particular feature would have been much more useful if it was actually streaming the Twitter conversations related to the #uso11 hashtag, though.

Real-time match statistics a mouse click away (screenshot)

The bad part is that living in Canada, I had to VPN into the US to trick the system into believing that I am a US based viewer. That’s doable and I gladly pay for the VPN service but these artificial borders are infuriating. To watch the action on my big screen TV, I had to connect my iMac with the TV set via a 20 foot-long HDMI cable. That works fine although it is not a very elegant solution. I’d rather had the live TV streaming provided directly via my Apple TV. I hope Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook is already working on it.

Who says you can't watch live sports without cable? (photo)

All in all, I am very impressed by what is possible today. I have an average speed Internet connection at home (8.1 Mbps according to speedtest.net) which gets further degraded by the VPN service (6.72 Mbps) and yet I am able to watch the action just like on TV. And with programming choices and features available, the experience is way better than the traditional TV. Yes, the future of interactive television has started. And I have a message to you, the cable and satellite TV companies - interactive streaming is what I want. Evolve or die!

PS: Rafael Nadal won the match.

Riots and the Big Data Problem

2011-08-28T21:34:00.000-07:00

The recent riots in London

Back from vacation, I was catching up on a few recent issues of The Economist. The riots in England have obviously made headlines in the UK magazine and one particular issue - very much related to content management - caught my eye.

The rioters were acting in plain view of the cameras and they were coordinating their actions using the BBM (BlackBerry Messenger). The UK is one of the countries with the highest density of surveillance cameras in the world and so the police have apparently plenty of video material and BlackBerry traffic to analyze to identify and apprehend some of the trouble-makers. Turns out, the data is not just plenty - there is too much of it.

Indeed, the data volumes are so huge that the police hardly stand a chance to ever analyze it. Strapped by tight budgets and austerity measures, the UK police have barely the resources to prosecute the most severe crime and there are no resources left to dig through the gigabytes and gigabytes of surveillance data.

This is an interesting “big data” problem. Lots has been written about big data lately. The availability of detailed data tracking for every transaction and every move opens up new opportunities that just a few years ago were unthinkable. Analyzing and understanding the data patterns leads to new types of services and efficiencies that savvy companies have already begun to take advantage of. And more is to come.

That’s all great for structured data which is relatively easy to mine and analyze using computer programs. The challenge comes when the data is unstructured, such as text messages or video feeds. Unstructured data is much harder to analyze programmatically with reliable outcomes and speeds that can keep up with the torrential pace at which the data is being generated.

Sure, content analytics are already a well established discipline and many vendors from IBM to OpenText have content analytics offerings today. IBM even made a lot of headlines earlier this year with its Watson project - a supercomputer specialized on natural language analysis and reasoning... and on the TV game Jeopardy. Watson was a unique system designed for a specific purpose and even Watson would have had a hard time identifying faces of perpetrators from hours of riot video footage.

That job is much harder and the technology is by far not as mature. Content analytics have a great future in light of the big data problem and it will be fun to watch as the technology matures over the next few years. In the mean time, let's hope the UK police apprehend the key trouble makers from the recent riots by whatever means they have at their disposal.

What's Missing in Google+

2011-08-21T18:01:00.000-07:00

Google’s foray into social media, Google+, has been busily adding users and receiving great reviews for its innovative design and capabilities. Everybody is raving about circles, the cool picture albums, and the way Google integrated its other properties. After having attracted over 750 million users, Facebook is now finally feeling the heat. Or is it?

Google+ has quickly attracted millions of users, enjoying what’s perhaps the fastest growth in history. However, when I look at the type of communication on Google+, I mostly see my professional ‘friends’ posting links to their own blog posts and articles. I do the same - we have all quickly jumped aboard since we understand the power of social media and we use Google+ as a free advertising tool. In fact, out of all the people in my Google+ circles, the only one posting something personal is Sergey Brin.

There is one fundamental challenge that Google+ has and it is not the features or design. It is a great tool but it doesn’t connect me with any new users. So far, I have been only connecting with the same folks I am already connected with on Facebook or on Twitter. And since we all are already connected on those networks, we continue using them since they work just fine.

When I started using Twitter after I was already on Facebook, I was able to ‘connect’ with many new people. The connections are of different type. I am connected with people like Richard Branson and Pete Cashmore on Twitter even if they don’t know me and care about me. Twitter makes it easy to connect with such people since it allows unilateral connections via “following”. On the other hand, my friends on Facebook know me and I know them - it is a bilateral connection where both sides agreed to connect. There is a difference between those two tools which is why I am using them both.

Google+ is not different. Sure, I have joined just like everybody else who’s actively using Facebook or Twitter is going to do. Curiosity drove me there and perhaps the urge not to be left behind. But it will be hard if not impossible for Google to throw enough new features at me to make me move at the cost of Facebook or Twitter. To do that, one of two scenarios would have to occur:

1. I would start using Google+ actively if all my contacts would use it as their primary social network, at the cost of Facebook and Twitter. That’s a hard one to achieve since both Facebook and Twitter are thriving and continuing to add users and - more importantly - traffic. This is the challenge with social networks - according to the Metcalfe’s Law the networks become more valuable as more users join in. But that means that a network replacing another one becomes only useful if it reaches a critical mass of users. And “users” means not people who have signed up but people who actively engage.

2. I would start using Google+ actively if it allowed me to connect with new users with whom I am not already connected with on Facebook or Twitter. There are plenty of people I know who are not on Facebook or Twitter and there are plenty of interesting people out there I don’t know at all. Google needs to find a way to connect me with those folks. That’s what Facebook and Twitter accomplished due to the different type of connections they allow. Find a way how to engage the social media skeptics through some new, must-have services. Or find a way to suggest connections with people who could be interesting to know through a new type of connection. But don’t copy Facebook and Twitter.

Of course there is a third scenario possible, if either Facebook or Twitter stumble. They could become sleezy and offensive like MySpace did or nerdy and lame like what happened to Second Life. They could implode due to lawsuits, privacy invasions, availability issues or talent drain. They could go public and start making irrational moves under the pressure from Wall Street. All of that is possible. But on its own, Google+ needs to make happen one of the two scenarios above. And that’s not happening right now.

HP Kills Palm

2011-08-18T20:19:00.000-07:00

In April 2010 - not even 18 months ago - I wrote my comments about the then announced acquisition of Palm by Hewlett-Packard. Back then, I was speculating about five possible scenarios and I guess I was wrong. The scenario number 6 has occurred and HP pulled the plug on the Palm devices and probably also on the webOS mobile operating system today.

This move doesn't come as a big surprise. Yes, it is unusual for a company with the kind of resources that HP has to give a project that little time to prove itself - particularly a relatively recent $1.2 bln acquisition. But since the launch of it's new webOS based devices just a couple of months ago (in February 2011), it became apparent that they were flopping in the market place. Just earlier this week, it was reported that Best Buy sold less than 10% of the 200,000 Touchpads they ordered. Clearly, the mobile devices market is becoming a market space where you either make it big or go home. HP is leaving now.

That begs the question: how will this move reshape the mobile market. Apple is today clearly the player to beat. Until this week, I thought that Google was the a number 2 (or even number 1) but their acquisition of Motorola announced earlier this week has potentially put Android on a new trajectory and I see plenty of challenges ahead. But today, Google is certainly one of the top 2 vendors in the mobile market place.

The position number 3 is heavily contested. Microsoft wants it really bad and they have made a lot of good moves so far. Their deal with Nokia was received somewhat skeptically at first, but it makes much more sense since the Google/Motorola deal. Microsoft now stands a good chance to take over the spot number 3 and perhaps even number 2 in the foreseeable future, particularly should Google mess up with Motorola.

The position number 3 is currently occupied by RIM and RIM appears to be under a lot of pressure now. RIM has missed its numbers in the June earnings announcement and has been losing market share at an alarming pace recently. Yet, RIM and its BlackBerry franchise do have an impressive installed base and an access to the enterprise market that other vendors envy. That makes RIM a likely target and there is plenty of possible suitors about.

So where does that leave HP? Well, they may decide not to participate in the mobility games any longer just like their big rivals IBM and Oracle. HP's new strategy appears to be following IBM's example by divesting the PC business (which was also announced today) and focusing on "higher margin growth categories". Both were acquisitions, by the way - remember Compaq (2002) and EDS (2008)?

If HP decides to participate, it has three options:

1. Embrace Android which would make them a Google partner. That's less likely now as Google's Android strategy is at crossroads and since HP also announced the acquisition of Autonomy today which puts it on a collision course with Google in the enterprise search space.

2. Go with Windows Phone which would continue HPs long standing partnership with Microsoft. This is quite a feasible scenario but HP appears to be wanting to get out of the hardware business today. By the way, how ironic is it that while HP is getting out, Google - the ultimate Internet company - is getting into the hardware business by acquiring Motorola?

3. Acquire RIM which would fit HP's focus on the enterprise market. As I said above, RIM is likely to be in play soon and HP could indeed be one of the suitors. HP would probably not shy away from the high price tag of $15-20 bln or more - they have spent big money like that in the past. And the RIM acquisition by HP appears less problematic than by Microsoft, Google, or some of the fence-setters such as IBM, Oracle or Cisco.

In the end, I dare to predict that HP will stay out of the mobile devices market. If they want to be more like IBM, they are better served by focusing on services and remaining hardware agnostic. Too bad about Palm, though, as that was a good piece of technology. I still remember when US Robotics shipped the first Palm Pilot back in 1996 - the first successful personal digital assistant (PDA) which is how we called smartphones before they had the 'phone' feature. Well, an era has come to an end. After the demise of Nokia's Symbian, there is yet again one less contender in the mobile race. It is a four-horse race now with Apple, Google, Microsoft and RIM and there are only three (or less) spots left!

Why the Google's Purchase of Motorola Could Be Great News for Microsoft

2011-08-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

Google surprised many this morning by announcing its intent to acquire Motorola Mobility, the mobile device manufacturer that has recently created by the Motorola split. At $12.5 bln, Google is spending some serious change - not that they can’t afford it - which only underscores the importance of mobility today and going forward. The stakes are high and so it is not a surprise that the key contenders are jockeying for positions.

So what are the consequences of this move? Google has been touting its Android operating system as open and open sourced and it was very successful in attracting many different hardware manufacturers including Samsung, HTC, LG, Dell, and, of course, Motorola. By buying Motorola, Google will need to convince the other vendors to stay with the Android OS which may be tricky now that Google is a direct competitor. Sure, Google sold its own smartphone in the past - the Nexus - but that was just a tactical maneuver to get Samsung and co. motivated and the phone was discontinued soon after they started shipping. Now with Motorola, Google is firmly in the competing corner.

None of the vendors licensing Android have been using Android exclusively and they all have other options. To stay with Android, Google will have to convince them that there is a solid Chinese wall between Motorola and Android to avoid any channel conflict. Google doesn’t have any credentials in that. Google will have plenty of struggle to combine its highly profitable advertising business with the low margin, highly competitive hardware business from Motorola and Motorola isn’t a small bite to swallow. Controlling both the software and hardware could give Google a leg up over the immensely profitable Apple franchise which in a way validates Apple’s closed and vertically integrated strategy.

The Motorola acquisition may motivate other Android phone makers to look for alternatives and the most obvious one is Microsoft. Many of these vendors are already shipping a Windows Phone based product and the Google acquisition of Motorola is likely going to send a strong breeze into Microsoft’s sails. It could possibly also give RIM a little bit of a reprieve, even though RIM is not ready to license out its own mobile operating systems (yes, they have two - the BlackBerry OS and the QNX). Similarly, Apple will not likely license its iOS to other vendors but should enjoy a boost in marketshare while the Motorola deal is being sorted out.

Some pundits call for Microsoft to acquire RIM and/or Nokia in response to Google’s move. I suggested the Microsoft-RIM marriage a long time ago but since the Nokia deal, that acquisition is less likely. In fact, Microsoft is standing strong right now as a dependable operating system vendor from whom all the device manufacturers can safely license the mobile OS. All of a sudden, that sounds much more attractive than licensing from the hard-to-predict Google. I think that the status quo is working really well for Microsoft. And even Nokia, having bet the house on Windows Phone must be breathing a sigh of relief.

Google actually claimed that the primary rationale behind the Motorola acquisition is the pile of patents that come with the deal. Well...whatever. I think that the patent wars that are currently raging between Google, Apple, Microsoft and others are not helping customers and that they are very detrimental to the industry in general. The patent laws may have to evolve but that could be a topic for another blog post. Besides, why is everyone claiming that their pile of thousands of patents is better than the other guy’s pile? Since when are patents sold by the pound?

To sum it up, the Motorola acquisition is a very risky and pricey move for Google who’s finding itself on an unfamiliar ground with hardware and who’ll have a lot to prove to keep Android open. I also believe that this deal has opened the door for Microsoft who’s suddenly looking like a safe bet when it gets to licensing a decent mobile operating system. It will be fun to watch how this is going to play out.

The Cloud and the Asymmetric Patriot Act

2011-08-09T20:02:00.000-07:00

USA PATRIOT Act of 2001

There have been numerous articles recently about cloud-based companies and their policies in regards to the Patriot Act. Most recently, Dropbox and Microsoft Office 365 have generated headlines when the press found out that their end user license agreement includes clauses that basically state that the company may have to hand the customer data over to the law enforcement authorities under certain circumstances – such as to comply with the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (in short USA PATRIOT Act).

Microsoft drew an additional dose of criticism as their policy apparently implies that they would repatriate and hand over data from European customers, even if the data resides on European soil. That, in turn, would be in violation with Europe’s data privacy and safe harbor laws which raised many eyebrows. Unlike the United States, the Europeans take personal privacy much more seriously. For example, an employee’s email belongs to the employee in many European countries and not to the company as it is the law in the US. By the way, am I the only one who finds the whole notion of cloud data residing on some country’s soil a little paradoxical? Since when do clouds care about borders?

My take is that the problem might not lie with the cloud based companies and their frivolous attitude towards their customers’ data. I believe that the challenge lies in the Patriot Act itself. The Patriot Act has been signed into law in October 2001 as a response to 9/11 and it was extended in May 2011. The Act grants the US government sweeping privileges to access private data in case of suspected terrorist threats. The US law enforcement agencies can apparently get your private data by requesting access to say Dropbox servers because suspected terrorists might be allegedly using Dropbox to plan their activities.

This kind of law would seem to violate the 4th Constitutional Amendment which protects citizens against unreasonable searches – law enforcement is supposed to get a court order and not many European courts would ever allow this. But the Patriot Act has been passed in the wake of 9/11 and anything to protect the US citizens from terrorists has a higher priority than protecting their civil liberties.

This reminds me of the speech that Sun co-founder and former Chief Scientist Bill Joy gave at TEDtalks back in 2006. Joy spoke about the asymmetric threats in the scary world we live in: “We can’t give up the rule of law to fight an asymmetric threat and we can’t fight the threat the stupid way we are doing because a million dollar act causes a billion dollar damage which causes a trillion dollar response which is largely ineffective and almost certainly has made the problem worse.”. If anything, Joy’s speech was understated as the 9/11 response has reached several trillions by now. The Patriot Act is part of that response and the cost keeps rising.

The effectiveness of the Patriot Act has been questioned many times but that’s not my point. The terrorists aren’t stupid and they know about it and they know about plenty of other data sharing services that are not run by American companies and are thus not subject to the Patriot Act. My point is that the generic and sweeping authority that the Patriot Act gave to the US government is scaring the good guys away from the Cloud.

At least 99.99% of people are not terrorists; they are people like you and me and we get all nervous about using online services that do not offer us sufficient privacy. Many countries have a culture and laws that demand a much higher privacy protection than the United States. The customers are already worried about the hackers who could compromise their information. And now, even the government is snooping in my data? Perhaps, my data is better protected if I use the online services of a company based in the Germany or Canada - countries that are not subject to the Patriot Act?

The US economy needs stimulation. We shouldn’t be scaring away the privacy-loving Europeans. The United States could easily be known as the country where your data is the safest – attracting business from the entire world. But that is not what people think today. Right now, the secure data hosting business is going elsewhere.

The press is crucifying US cloud companies for the alleged vagueness in their end user policies. But what if those companies just try to do business in an environment that effectively forces them to have such clauses in their policies? Is the media barking up the wrong tree?

I know that there is a lot of good that came out of the Patriot Act but I suggest that in the era of cloud computing, it may need to be reviewed and possibly amended.

The New Apps Frontier

2011-07-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

Apple seems to be running circles around its competition right now. Just as it looked as if Android might be gaining enough market share to put some pressure on Apple’s, Apple turns one record quarter after another. Sure, Google is gaining market share but the only profit from Android-based phones appears to be made by Google’s advertising business.

Impressive are not only Apple’s revenue and profits but also the diversification of their portfolio. Not only does the iPhone account for more than half of Apple’s revenue, the iPad contributes now more than the iMac which is not doing too poorly either. And yet Apple has another trump card in their pocket which they will pull when the time is ripe - the Apple TV.

It hasn’t been widely reported, but the Apple TV is powered by iOS - the same operating system that is used in the iPhone and iPad. That suggests that many of the hundreds of thousand of apps available in the App Store today could run on Apple TV too. Not all of them will work, of course, as the user interface, resolution, and other capabilities of the device are different. But popular apps such as weather, news, RSS reader, maps, charts, calendars, and even a browser are apps that would be useful today on a TV screen.

Apple TV actually already provides a small number of apps including Netflix, YouTube, Flickr, a photo viewer and a music and video player. Presumably not much is needed to open the device to developers and I suspect that the existing development tools and skills are highly applicable. It is also likely that Apple will add a mouse or the touch pad to Apple TV which would open the door for many more interactive apps.

This will be a massive source of additional revenue for Apple and also a huge competitive advantage. Developers are already realizing that building apps for iOS gets them way more bang for their investment buck than building for the other mobile operating systems. A single iOS app runs on all devices including iPhone, iTouch, and iPad. In contrast, many developers are today complaining about the fragmentation of the Android market where an app built for Samsung Galaxy may or may not work on the HTC EVO. That’s why most developers still start with iOS support before moving on to Android - at least that’s what Flurry, Inc. recently reported.

Apple is not the only vendor pursuing this idea - all the game consoles have the same ambition. My Nintendo Wii supports a couple of apps including Netflix. Microsoft demonstrated their Xbox 360 with Lync-based video conferencing at the recent Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC). Intelligent devices connected to a TV set are going to be the next app frontier. And Apple has an incredible advantage as their TV device runs on a well tested operating system with thousands of existing apps.

Practical Gamification Use Case

2011-07-21T06:06:00.000-07:00

Gamification is a buzz word making the rounds lately. The idea is very simple – drive user adoption and employee engagement by turning the use of enterprise software into a game. Deep inside, we are apparently all gamers and can’t resist playing. It starts already in kindergarten when we used to collect stickers on a chart – whoever had the most stickers got a reward – I win, you lose.

Now, we are applying the same principle to the workplace by adding game elements to enterprise software. We can earn points and badges by sharing information, contributing to discussions, completing assignments, passing tests, or closing deals. What used to be a performance chart on the manager’s office wall is now a leader board with employees leveling up all the way to a Champion or Grandmaster level.

I must admit, it is pretty addictive and the amazing thing is that it seems to work. Inspired by the world of video games and more recently by social games such as Foursquare, gamification is invading the enterprise. I have recently spent a little bit of time with the IT developers at OpenText who have built our new gaming application called the “Leaderboard”. Leaderboard is not an OpenText product; at least not yet. This is OpenText as a customer building a custom application on top of the existing commercial offering. That commercial offering happens to be OpenText Pulse, a social media product that the OpenText Content Server customers can simply add on top of their existing deployment.

I've quickly completed a couple of tasks get a decent ranking

The team designed the Leaderboard not only to drive internal adoption of Pulse but also to stimulate the desirable employee behavior. Different social interactions earn points – posting a comment, liking someone else’s comment, sharing a document, etc. By collecting points, users can level up to different levels – from Newbies to Masters. There are also points available for non-Pulse activities such as correctly adhering to the iterative development process (IDP) or through learning more about our products by watching a training video and taking a quick test.

The team actually used the concepts from a Bartle Test to design how different users can approach their path to earning the most points in a way that best suits their personality. Richard Bartle defined four types of game users: Achievers, Explorers, Socializers and Killers. This concept has since been used by many game developers and so our team designed the Leaderboard with something to offer for each gamer type. Being a friendly Canadian company, they have renamed the gamer types into something a bit more politically correct.

James Knight, Trevor Sharpe and Quinton Roberts - the Leaderboard development team

The results are more than promising. The Leaderboard has been the buzz for weeks on Pulse and when it had gone to beta, available to the IT team only, outsiders like me had to beg to be invited (Google doesn’t have a lock on scarcity marketing tactics). After just a couple of weeks of the beta test, the IT level of active participation was well above 60% which is significantly higher than the current average in the rest of the company. And the users are truly engaged – many competing with fervor to beat their co-workers. The “side effect” is more communication, employee engagement, and expertise sharing which is what Pulse is all about. As the OpenText CIO Steve Hunt told me: “It's like cyber crack .... They’re hooked!”.

Why We Acquired Global 360

2011-07-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, OpenText announced the acquisition of Global 360. As we are expanding our market reach into the business process management (BPM) market, Global 360 adds a complementary set of technologies to OpenText’s portfolio and strengthens the OpenText partnership with Microsoft. With the combination of Metastorm and Global 360, we are now the largest provider of BPM solutions for the Microsoft ecosystem. The BPM solutions complement our existing information governance and archiving solutions for SharePoint and Exchange. But what’s more important, Global 360 increases the critical mass of process management focus inside of OpenText.

The OpenText ECM Suite already included solutions for Transactional Content Management (TCM), which is a close cousin of BPM. OpenText has long provided offerings for scanning and imaging, our own optical character recognition (OCR) engine and fax server (RightFax). Many of the OpenText solutions offered in the SAP and Oracle ecosystems are based on TCM – Accounts Payable, Employee File Management or Travel Receipts Management, etc. And of course, OpenText provides the secure compliance infrastructure that many transactional solutions require.

Not long ago, OpenText acquired Metastorm which added BPM capabilities together with cloud-based process design, business process analysis (BPA) and enterprise architecture (EA) software. Now, Global 360 brings additional capabilities particularly around dynamic case management (DCM), cloud-based process discovery and process analytics and reporting.

The Global 360 acquisition is unique, though, as it allows OpenText to not only expand its offerings, but also reach a critical mass needed to establish itself as a serious contender in a new market. This is not a minor matter. Acquiring companies successfully is not easy, and for a billion dollar vendor like OpenText, acquiring a smaller company could easily result in “swallowing it up” without much tangible impact. One way to prevent this is to fold the acquired organization into an existing group that sponsored the acquisition in the first place.

That happens, for instance, when a company acquires a smaller vendor to accelerate its technology investment or to add services capacity. Such was the case with the recent OpenText acquisition of weComm. OpenText already had a mobility group that needed to address the challenge of cost-effectively supporting multiple mobile platforms. weComm addresses that problem and was naturally combined with the existing mobility group.

When a company branches out into an adjacent space, however, there may not be a group that would be a logical home for the acquired company. In fact, the acquired company is expected to become such group. By buying Metastorm in February 2011, OpenText made a move into the BPM market. According to the analysts, Metastorm is a leading player in BPM which represents a natural expansion opportunity for OpenText. After all, many BPM solutions depend on content.

And now, by combining Metastorm, Global 360 and the existing TCM solutions, OpenText has one of the broadest product portfolios and one of the largest and most experienced teams in the world of BPM. The acquisition not only puts us on the BPM map, it makes us one of the strongest players in terms of market share, number of customers, and market presence. And, the BPM products and people won’t go unnoticed within OpenText as the business process management DNA now represents a significant portion of the company.

That’s why we’ve acquired Global 360.

Did You Just Tweet That?

2011-07-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

I've spoken at a conference recently and just like most conferences lately, the discussion turned inevitably to social media at some point. Such conversations are always fun since I enjoy the diversity in people's opinions - from absolute addicts to the cynical denialists.

But at some point someone asked me if I was tweeting during the conference and I of course admitted that yes, I did. I like to tweet at a conference for multiple reasons:

1. Repeating a key point in writing helps me to remember it. This is Notes Taking 2.0, even if Twitter doesn't make it easy to go back to your notes after a while.
2. Sharing some of the key points of wisdom allows me to contribute to the community of my followers - those who didn't make it to the conference can get some of the key messages.
3. And then there is the personal branding aspect - tweeting about a particular session shows that I care about the subject and makes me part of the club and attracts like-minded followers.

Now, the other question that was raised is how polite is it to tweet while I am at a conference. Is it impolite to the presenter to see people staring at their iPhones or iPads? Is it socially acceptable to my co-workers or friends who are there with me? Am I just not paying attention?

Hobnobbing with Tony Clement

Recently, I was on a panel at a RTNDA conference (Radio and Television News Directors Association) and on the panel after me was no one else than Tony Clement, Canada's federal minister of industry. Mr. Clement is very much in touch with the Internet and technology and he's a very frequent, interesting and authentic Twitter user. Unlike many other politicians, he doesn't have a PR staffer do it on his behalf. Tony Clement tweets himself.

At the RTNDA panel, he was tweeting straight from the stage. I was in the audience and I've exchanged a couple of tweets with him as he was right there on the stage. And you know what, you can't accuse him that he wasn't paying attention when he was being asked a question.

Tony Clement (3rd from the right) tweeting while on a panel. And why not?

With social media and mobility, our culture is evolving. The mobile device is much more personal and intimate than a laptop which was always seen as a work tool. And working while listening to others is always a little rude (yeah, yeah, I like multitasking too). But using a personal communication device in the company of others is becoming much more acceptable.

I still don't think that it is acceptable in a one on one conversation and I certainly don't get away with it at the dinner table. Some of it needs to stay that way. But we don’t need to look far to see the future. Asia has been far ahead of North America in mobility and so is Europe. And we've all seen the pictures of packed trains in Tokyo with every passenger staring at their mobile device. While the culture in Japan might be different, mixing the in-person and the virtual social engagements will be becoming more and more the norm.

Is Device Convergence Happening?

2011-07-04T19:08:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, a report by Pew Internet came out that revealed a surprising statistic about e-readers. According to the data Pew presented, e-readers such as Kindle and Nook have reached a 12% penetration among the US adult population. That’s actually not bad even though it is far behind other devices such as mobile phones (83%), laptops (56%), and MP3 players (44%). But this number is way ahead of the tablet penetration which is still relatively low with 8%.

That effectively means that the iPad didn’t at all manage to kill the Kindle. I must admit, that when the iPad first arrived, I thought it would mean the end of the Kindle. You can read books on the iPad and Amazon even provides a very good Kindle reader app for iPad. And after all, how much does Amazon really care about the Kindle? They make money no matter what device I read their books on, right?.

I suppose the e-book readers are doing so well because they are really good at what they have been designed for. They are single-purpose devices optimized for their job. For reading books, some of their advantages include the screen that allows reading in bright sun light, the ease of e-books dowloading and, my favorite, the light weight. All the tablets I have tested so far are too heavy for reading in bed. Kindle is featherlight with its 241 grams (8.5 oz) and it makes reading in bed easier than with a paperback.

This is really begging the question about convergence. Are we going to end up with a single device that can do it all or are we going to keep a multitude of devices? Convergence is definitely appealing, if nothing more than to eliminate the clutter of power chargers and adapters that I complained about while packing for vacation last summer. But having the right tool for the right job is unquestionably not a bad approach either.

Are we going to dump the e-reader and read on an iPad? Maybe, if it becomes lighter and learns how to handle the glare. Or maybe the e-book readers will add the apps and blur the line between tablets and e-readers.

But how about the convergence of other devices? Do I no longer need a watch because I have a smartphone that can tell the time? Well, I am really attached to my mechanical watch. Are we going to throw away the GPS and use the iPhone instead? Yes, it works, but the dedicated GPS is still a little easier to use while driving. How about the laptop that I keep schlepping around together with my iPad? If I had a keyboard and a mouse, I could perhaps get rid of it. Couldn't I?

Well, I don’t know what the answer is but I do know that the key is going to be the user experience. The simplicity and compromise-less user experience - software and hardware - will determine whether or not a particular device will converge. If a device doesn’t give me the right experience, the convergence won’t happen, even if the functionality is there.

QR Code Obsession

2011-06-30T03:35:00.000-07:00

Last week, I was at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston which is a major conference and trade show for the 2.0 crowd. The conference was a bit different than last year – with a new, bigger venue and a much stronger presence from the ECM vendors. On the buzzwords front, “Facebook for the enterprise” is out while “social business” and “social analytics” are in. It was fun to catch up on all the 2.0 buzz!

You should try this one!

One of the new trends I’ve seen was the growing use of QR codes. QR codes are 2-dimensional bar-codes that contain small amounts of valuable information such as URLs, contact data, geographic coordinates, Wi-Fi network information, SMS, or a text message. Compared to regular bar codes, QR codes can contain much more data. That comes in handy with mobile devices since most of us don’t like to type on them due to the small keyboard size. QR codes provide a great shortcut as they allow us to capture data via the built-in camera. The QR code reader app analyzes quickly the captured image, extracts the data – and in most cases acts on it immediately. For example, when the QR code contains an URL, the reader takes us directly to that URL in the browser.

QR codes are obviously hugely effective anywhere the traditional bar codes worked well. You need to order a spare part? Just scan the QR on the broken part and the app brings you straight to the right catalog entry. Do you need to keep track of patient records in a hospital? Use the QR code on her wristband to check all the drugs, procedures and materials she used. Do you need to locate the right crate in a warehouse? Just scan the QR code in the physical records application and off you go.

Unlike bar-codes, however, QR codes are much more mobile and don’t require any proprietary reader device – you can download one of many free apps onto the smartphone that you already own. That enables many new use cases. For example, airlines started using QR codes as a paperless boarding pass. Real estate companies started sticking them onto the “for sale” signs in front of a house to give you an on the spot tour of the property, eliminating those rain-soaked fliers. For marketers, QR codes can serve as a virtual coupon, offering you an interesting on-site promotion and taking you straight to the purchase page with a single snap.

At the tradeshow, I was surprised by two things. The first is that even though the QR codes are becoming pretty omnipresent in advertising, most people didn’t know what they were and didn’t have a QR code reader installed on their smartphone. This is the geek crowd, the intellectual elite of the enterprise 2.0 world, the folks who are always connected and on top of the latest market trends. That makes me wonder how effective those QR codes on billboards are. Most likely, the number of clicks is rather dismal.

The other thing that surprised me was that many of the QR codes splattered on the banners were just taking me to a marketing web page. I’m standing in front of a booth where I could see a live demo and talk to real people and, instead, they expected me to just check out their web site? I didn’t need to come to the trade show to do that. To their credit, though, several of the QR codes I tried took me to a page offering some sort of value – a free analyst report (great) or a white paper (not that great).

Clearly, the marketing use of QR codes is still in their infancy. Over time, we will likely get a much higher population of users with QR code readers installed and using them readily. And we will develop marketing tactics that will make it worthwhile snapping pictures of QR codes. Or perhaps we will use some completely different technology. How about implanted RFID chips or the omnipresent retina scanners like in the movie Minority Report? We’ll see. For now, I encourage you to get a QR code reader – I use i-nigma although most readers I tested were just as good. Try it out!

PS: BTW, you can generate your QR codes yourself with many online generators. I like this one: http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/

Semantic Search at the Globe and Mail

2011-06-26T10:13:00.000-07:00

Recently, I had the opportunity to meet with Kevin Schlueter, enterprise architect at the Globe and Mail. The Globe and Mail is one of Canada’s largest newspapers and they run one of the largest Web sites in Canada. Kevin told me an interesting story that I thought was worth sharing.

The Globe and Mail runs one of Canada's largest news sites

Newspapers live from advertising and so they are keenly interested in attracting the largest possible audience and keeping the readers on their site as long as possible. People usually come to a newspaper Web site to find some specific information. This becomes particularly relevant in times of significant events of interest - such as the recent federal elections in Canada. While the home page usually provides up-to-date information about the main election race, most users are also interested in their particular candidates and so they search for them.

Search optimization became very critical for the Globe and Mail. Since a newspaper is in the information selling business, the goal was stated as “show me what I want to know even if I don’t ask for it”. And this is the tricky part - exposing the readers to relevant articles that the user will likely be interested in. And that’s why the Globe and Mail employed semantic technology.

Semantic search is the next level of searching. The basic search is looking for the most statistically prominent keywords that are contained in the text body. It can find out about who, what, when, where, and perhaps even why. Full text search is often augmented by a metadata search which can reveal information such as the author, section, page, or publication data. But a semantic search can leverage automatically generated semantic metadata which is information about topics, people, places, products and concepts.

With semantic metadata, a reader can search for an article about a particular topic - say the Canada’s Governor General David Johnston. Unlike Wayne Gretzky, David Johnston is a fairly common name and a conventional search would find a whole bunch of them. Just try to google that name. This is where a semantic search helps by identifying correctly all relevant concepts - such as the David Johnston who is Canada’s GG, the one who’s a Harvard professor, or the one who’s a known author and journalist. These concepts can be either presented to the reader as options or they can be used to deliver the content relevant in a given context.

You may think that this is what the online retailers have been doing for years - recommending similar products based on your current selection. But there is a big difference here. The retailers work with product catalogs which contain very structured data. When you are looking at a pair of shoes, the retailer can automatically recommend another five pairs in your size that are similar but perhaps a little more stylish (aka expensive). All of that is based on defined database fields. The semantic search can make such associations based on information contained in unstructured text in an article or a group of articles which is much more difficult.

Papers are changing

And that’s exactly what the Globe and Mail is doing - using the semantic search technology to generate semantic metadata that improves search results, increases search engine optimization (SEO), and makes the site more “sticky”. And stickiness means more advertising revenue which is what the paper lives from.

According to Kevin, it works really well as he could see during the recent election when the traffic on the site peaked to over 12,000 hits per second after the first results were published. Kevin plans on additional uses for the semantic search technology such as faceted navigation, similarity, or automatically generated topic pages. All that to keep the Globe and Mail site competitive in the Canadian news business.

Quo Vadis, RIM?

2011-06-18T13:56:00.000-07:00

Everybody is talking about RIM today and I simply have to comment. I have written several articles about RIM in the past. Over a year ago, I have suggested the 10 Reasons Why Microsoft Should Acquire RIM. A few months back, I have also wondered why does RIM keep chasing the consumers instead of focusing on their traditional strengths in the enterprise. RIM is the largest employer here in Waterloo, ON and so I do care.

RIM is in trouble and there is no way to hide it. Having discovered the killer mobile app - email - a decade ago, RIM has completely missed the notion that we could use the BlackBerry for more things than just email. Apple entered the market back in 2007 and completely transformed it with some 400,000 apps available for the iPhone. The result is a dramatic loss in market share which is now inevitably followed by revenue shortfall.

Here is RIM's problem: declining marketshare.

The question on everyone's mind is what will happen next with RIM. I see three possible scenarios:

1. Turn-around
In this ideal scenario, RIM will find a way to compete with compelling devices but that won't be enough. RIM will need to attract developers and get quickly to some 100,000 apps. That won't be easy since the developers have to divide their precious resources between supporting iOS, Android, RIM and now Microsoft and HP are also vying for their attention - and with much deeper pockets. And even the application support may not be enough. RIM will need to add some exclusive or at least unique and compelling content and services. The mobile battle ground is no longer about devices but entire eco-systems. Apple has got music and movies, Google has search and ads, and even Microsoft has the Xbox games. What will be RIM’s angle? My suggestion would be enterprise content and enterprise apps but that hasn’t been RIM’s focus lately.

2. Acquisition
The voices suggesting that RIM will be acquired were loud yesterday. The Wall Street Journal even declared Microsoft the most likely suitor. While I suggested that a year ago, I don’t see that scenario as likely in the next 12 months. Microsoft is right now in a committed relationship with Nokia and that relationship would have to fail before Microsoft could pursue RIM with a straight face. And honestly, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Microsoft built an awesome and differentiated mobile operating system and appears to be quite determined to make it a success. However, they still have to get those 100,000 apps - here they face the same challenge as RIM.

There are, of course, other possible suitors who could be interested in RIM. Cisco could use it to boost its unified communications agenda - and to add some additional load on those routers. Oracle has surprisingly not articulated any mobile strategy so far and buying RIM would be a shot in the arm, particularly given Oracle’s laser focus on the enterprise. IBM has also been waiting on the sidelines and could use a mobile platform. And even Google could acquire RIM, swap the OS and use it as a foray into the enterprise market. And let’s not forget other big players in the IT market: Dell, Intel, Lenovo, etc. I just hope it’s not going to be Computer Associates or some cable company.

3. Demise
The 3rd, least attractive scenario is a slow - or maybe not that slow - demise. Vicious cycle of falling market shares, declining revenues, and lay-offs could lead to RIM following in the footsteps of Palm. Sure, even Palm got eventually acquired by HP but at the time, Palm was already pretty much irrelevant. And if RIM doesn’t make some radical changes, this scenario could really happen.

I sincerely hope it won’t come to a demise of RIM and that RIM turns things around. RIM is a great company and the world will be a better place with an independent player keeping the big vendors honest. Acquisition by the right company would not be a bad outcome either. I still believe that Microsoft would have been the best fit but as I explained above, this scenario is less likely now than it was when I have suggested it in April 2010.

It sure will be interesting to watch this market play out.

The Software Alone Won't Make You Social

2011-06-12T18:38:00.000-07:00

I hear about many organizations that struggle with taking advantage of the power of social media. The first problem is of course buying into the idea that social media isn’t a waste of time. The second, far larger problem, is to get users to actually use the software and become social with their colleagues. Yes indeed, deploying social software alone will not make you social. The ultimate goal must be to use the technology to raise employee productivity by increasing the level of social collaboration across the enterprise.

Many organizations, however, do not have an inherently social DNA. Sometimes, it is the focus on individual accomplishments that has created an individualistic culture. Other times, the nature of the business has historically not stimulated collaboration across teams. And sometimes, organizations that have gone through years of tough times, develop a culture where employees compete with each other and their primary instinct isn’t to share and collaborate but to horde information to make themselves indispensable. Such survivalist behavior is at odds with the openness and team spirit that social software can stimulate.

There is often a big difference between various functions and groups in the organization. Typically, particular groups embrace social media quickly while others remain in denial. This is where the organization needs to focus on adoption. There are various approaches that an organization can apply to stimulate the adoption. For example, the organization should suck into the social software as much already existing profile data as possible from other applications. Employees should be encouraged to post their pictures. Or, the pictures should be automatically imported from the employee badge database. Nothing makes veterans update their profiles faster than when they find out that their 10 year old badge picture is visible to all of their colleagues.

These tricks are based on a simple realization. Unlike in the consumer space, the enterprise social media knows all of its users already. They are the company’s employees and their user accounts already exist. We don’t need to convince them to join in - we can make them part of the application automatically since we know who they are. As a result, the early adopters of the social software can mention anybody in the enterprise by their user name - which then sends the mentioned user an alert. And when people see that they are being spoken about on a social site, they will come to check it out.

The adoption of social media in the enterprise has a few advantages over the public social media. It does not happen automatically though, particularly not in organizations that are historically not very social. In the end, however, the greatest driver is the corporate culture. If the culture hasn’t been very social, the management really needs to take this issue on and work towards a change. The best place to start is leading by example: when management starts communicating via social media, employees follow.

Email Isn’t Dying Yet

2011-06-07T17:11:00.000-07:00

For a while now, social pundits have been tolling the bell for email. Pointing out that email is ineffective and out of control, they proclaim the upcoming demise of email which is to be replaced by social software. I agree that email has been used and abused by many people to do many things that it has never been designed for. Indeed, email is not a suitable team collaboration tool and yet we all have probably attempted to use it for team collaboration at some point - often with frustrating results. Email has also not been designed for file sharing and still we all keep sending out attachments every day. However, email has several things going for it that, I believe, will keep it around for a long time:

1. Unique identity
The world of social media is pretty messy when we consider identity. I have an ID on Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Xing, Ping, and many other social services. None of them talk to each other well and having to create my identity with yet another profile on each one of the services leads to severe limitations in my experience. While there have been attempts to establish a common ID (e.g. via the Open ID Foundation), those attempts are still in their infancy. In the end, all the social services fall back on my email address because that is a unique and consistent way of identifying me.

2. Single inbox
With all the services that I subscribe to, I am expected to regularly check in several times a day to catch up on the news from my social network. I may actually do that several times a day on Twitter and Facebook but it is hardly realistic to keep track of multiple accounts. In the enterprise, the situation is similar with all the different social services such as Dropbox, Box, Yammer, SharePoint, Lync, Salesforce Chatter, SAP StreamWork or OpenText Pulse. That’s why all these vendors rely on email alerts to inform me that someone has posted a note for me on a social site. In fact, Twitter recently expanded the use of email alerts which indicates that social networks aren’t winning this particular battle. Email has managed to achieve what no other software managed to do yet – it trained me to come looking for new messages on a regular basis.

3. Targeted messages
Email is not a very good collaboration tool. Collaboration is about multiple persons jointly working on a task. When you receive those endless and frustrating email threats that keep CCing everyone, whether it’s relevant or not, you know that someone is using email for the wrong purpose. Social software can improve such collaboration significantly. However, email is a very effective way for any one-to-one and one-to-many communication. If I don’t expect a task to be worked on by a team, email is the right way to communicate to that team. Sure, I can send a “message” on Facebook but that’s really just email. Besides, Facebook sends me a real email to alert me about this message. Maybe, the new generation of millennials can do all their work on Facebook and not use email at all. But there is nothing wrong with using email – when used for the right type of communication.

While I agree that email has many shortcomings, social media is not a panacea. I keep hearing complaints from people who get too many emails. Well folks, sorry to tell you, but you can just as well get too many messages in your social site. You can find a lot spam in your social networks and, if you are a poor communicator, social media isn’t going to save you. Social software has created tremendous opportunities for team collaboration but no, I don’t believe that it will make email obsolete anytime soon.

Securing Content via Tethering

2011-05-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I met with a group of customers representing the government institutions of a small Asian nation. For a variety of geo-political reasons it was apparent that for a relatively small country they spend quite a bit of money on their national defense. And so it was no surprise that every other question turned to security.

Securing content has long been an integral part of every decent Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system on the market. Most offerings provide solid authentication and access control (often called permissions). Robust auditing is a requirement not just for security but also for many compliance applications. For example, the 21 CFR Part 11 regulation in the Pharmaceutical industry is big on auditing and electronic sign-offs.

But what most of these security capabilities don't consider is that they are really securing the system and not the content. Yes, the repository is very secure but the content wants to be used, and to be used, it cannot just sit in a secure repository. Even the most basic use such as viewing usually means taking the content out of the repository where all of the fancy authentications and permissions become irrelevant. Indeed, as soon as users have the right to read a document and open it with their desktop application, the document is controlled by the users and not by the content management system (CMS). The users can save it on their flash drive, forward it via email or post it on Facebook. Not much security if you ask me.

During the meeting, I explained to the customers the two ways to secure content outside of the repository. The first method is using encryption via rights management - sometimes referred to as information rights management (IRM) or enterprise rights management (ERM). This approach is based on the same technology as digital rights management (DRM) which dates back to the mid 90s with companies such as Intertrust. DRM was the entertainment industry's attempt to control content piracy by encrypting the content and requiring users to apply a key that would control what they are allowed to do with it.

The vendors in rights management in the enterprise market applied the same approach by extending the repository permissions to content outside of the repository. But as we've seen with DRM, rights management really gets in the way of usability. The key distribution becomes a challenge and the users struggle to encrypt and decrypt their content. This inconvenience was so significant that consumer companies such as Sony and Apple eventually abandoned DRM altogether.

In the enterprise space, most rights management vendors got acquired by the bigger players who now rule this market - Oracle acquired Sealed Media (via Stellent), EMC got Authentica and Microsoft built their own RMS which OpenText integrates with to offer a solution for it's own repository. But because of the user inconvenience, rights management deployments are usually limited to specific applications such as deal rooms or contracts management.

Rights Management controls content
permissions outside the repository

The other way of securing content is much newer and more innovative: content tethering. Its main idea is to address the key security weakness of a secure repository - which is controlling the content when it leaves the repository - by not letting it ever leave. It's not a surprise that this approach has yet again been pioneered by the media companies. The most notorious example is YouTube which allows any user to view the content on their site but also make it available on any other site, blog, RSS reader, portal or mobile device by providing a simple widget that can be easily embedded in such applications. That’s done by copying a short snippet of code that YouTube makes readily available to anyone.

Widgets can be easily embedded

With the widget approach, the YouTube content can be easily used by any application but - and here is the beauty of this technology - the content never leaves the YouTube repository. The widget displays the content straight from the YouTube repository while YouTube retains complete control and security of the content. The content cannot be downloaded unless explicitly permitted (sorry Wikileaks) and the content owner can update it any time or take it down which is something YouTube has to do regularly to please those pesky media companies crying about copyrights infringement.

The content tethering works not just for video. SlideShare does the same for PowerPoint slides, Flickr does it for pictures and RSS feeds do it for news articles. And just as DRM found its use in the enterprise, the same is happening with content tethering.

Widgets enable tethering for any type of content

OpenText (yes, my employer) has released an enterprise version of widgets that allow customers to tether content residing in the Enterprise Library, a highly secure repository. Leveraging our own set of content viewers (remember that little Spicer acquisition in 2008?), the OpenText Widget Services work with virtually any type of content from documents to rich media. The widgets can be embedded via tiny code snippets into any web site, blog, portal or mobile site. And with tethering, customers have a new way to secure their content while making it widely available to users who don't need any pre-requisite software on their devices and who don't need to worry about how to decrypt that darn contract I'm supposed to review by noon today.

And that's an interesting solution for security sensitive customers like the security sensitive folks from Asia I met the other day.

The Real Problem with the Cloud

2011-05-22T20:27:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of cloud computing. The idea of having software provided as a service without having to actually deploy it makes a lot of sense. But, I often encounter skeptics who keep bringing up what I think are the wrong anti-cloud arguments - security concerns, availability issues, or perhaps the lack of customizations. The troubles that Amazon, Sony or Twitter just recently experienced are only fueling such arguments.

While those are valid concerns today, they are just growing pains. They are often exaggerated by the media and the blogosphere. In time, the cloud offerings may be able to address these issues better than any on-premise deployment. Take security, for instance, which is perhaps the most common issue raised by the cloud skeptics. Every one of my employers in the US used a SaaS based solution for payroll. And since that particular vendor caters to millions of users, I trust their security more than I would have trusted any one of my employers.

The one thing, however, that worries me about the cloud-based solutions today is the ability of a customer to part ways with their cloud providers. Nothing lasts forever and it is very likely that every customer will come to a point where they will want to get their data, templates, process definitions, business rules, users profiles, permissions, and customizations off the cloud vendor and move them into some other cloud.

The reasons may be many. The vendor could go out of business - it’s not like all those cloud start-ups are widely profitable today and some of them will just not make it. The vendor could also decide to shut down the service just like Google discontinued Wave and Video. The vendor could be acquired by someone else who changes the business terms. Or, the customer’s requirements evolve and the vendor no longer meets them. In any case, getting off a cloud where you have invested a ton of data and work isn’t trivial.

Nobody is talking much about this today. Of course, all the vendors are keen to attract and keep customers. Nobody wants to advertise the ability to let customers go easily. But that’s exactly what they need to do to get serious enterprise customers. They need to provide the right APIs, tools, services and terms that make an easy farewell possible.

This is the one cloud challenge that has me worried. On-premise software is also tough to leave but at least the customer owns the system and the data and has usually a plenty of time to figure out how to dump their vendor. A 30 day notice is not what enterprise customers will be comfortable with.

BlackBerry Playbook - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

2011-05-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

I finally got to test the released version of the RIM BlackBerry PlayBook and here are my impressions of the PlayBook - the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good

The PlayBook is a 7 inch tablet device with a new operating system by RIM. I am a fan of the 7 in format as I already determined when I tested the Samsung Galaxy. The 7 inch format is big enough to get a decent browser experience and to be able to type and yet it makes the device immensely more portable. The device has two cameras and an HDMI slot, although I didn’t find any SD card slot to my disappointment.

The PlayBook has a very sharp looking display. The resolution is 1024x600 which is more dpi than the iPad with 1024x768 given its smaller screen size. I like the user interface of the new PlayBook OS (QNX) which makes the app interaction very easy - it is much more obvious about which apps are currently running compared to the iPad. Talking about the UI, I have to mention the Flash support which is something iPad doesn’t do. That said, I am not so sure lately I really want Flash to survive, given the abundance of invasive Flash adds. I do realize though that the advertisers will find another technology to annoy me with their ads if they don’t have Flash.

The PlayBook user interface is awesome

Finally, I like the standard set of applications that come with the PlayBook. Besides the usual suspects such as browser, music player, picture viewer etc., the PlayBook also comes with a set of office applications called Word To Go, Sheet To Go, and Slideshow To Go. I’ve tried to open up a couple of Office documents and I was positively surprised to see a pretty decent fidelity of a PowerPoint deck - something the Keynote app on the iPad still struggles with. That said, don’t expect to be able to use a complex Excel spreadsheet with pivot tables.

The Bad

There were a few things I didn’t like about the PlayBook. First, the device is surprisingly heavy. With 425 g, the device is too heavy to hold comfortably in one hand for a long time - i.e. when reading a book. The iPad weighs 607 g which is much more but given its size, the weight is not that surprising. The Samsung Galaxy weighs 385 g which is less but even that was too much for reading when I tested it. The Kindle only weight 241 g which is why it is such a successful reading device.

I was impressed by the fidelity of PowerPoint decks opened on the PlayBook's native Slides To Go app.

Many people have reported about the hard to use power switch. It is really, really hard to engage - the designers clearly haven’t tried the button themselves. That said, you don’t need the power button much - a simple sweep on the screen wakes up the PlayBook from hibernation. I did like the volume buttons that some of the reviews criticized. My iPhone and iPad have them too and I use them all the time.

While the PlayBook hardware appears very slick, the software was clearly a bit rushed. The PlayBook has no native calendar or email client. To use email, the PlayBook has to be tethered to a BlackBerry (smartphone) via a bluetooth connection which I wasn’t able to test since I traded my BlackBerry in for an iPhone not long ago. This limitation will likely go away in some future update but right now, the tablet’s usefulness is limited without email which is my number one application on the iPad.

The Ugly

In the end, it is all about the software - most notably the apps. And that’s where the PlayBook has its work cut out. The BlackBerry has been only slowly trying to catch up with Apple and Google in apps availability but the PlayBook OS (NQX) is distinct from BlackBerry and there are only a handful of apps available. While the PlayBook has in theory most of the apps one would need for work - let’s ignore that email issue for a minute - the fun apps are in very short supply. From the list of my most useful iPad apps, I was able to find a browser, a basic RSS reader, a note-taking tool, Twitter client, and I’ll throw in a Facebook client which iPad doesn’t have. From the list of my coolest iPad apps, I didn’t find a single one.

The Trump Card

The key to the PlayBook’s success will be RIM’s ability to attract developers. Right now, I am a bit skeptical. However, there have been some reports about the PlayBook’s ability to support Android apps in the near future. Should that come true - and should the apps run in a realistic mode with full capabilities - RIM might pull a great coup and address the lack-of-apps issue overnight. But until that happens, the PlayBook’s outlook is questionable.

My son is testing the 'play' part of PlayBook. He enjoyed the Flash support.

The Summary

The PlayBook is a beautiful, well designed device. Assuming the apps will become no issue, it will be a solid option for many users, particularly those using it primarily for business. Besides the native office apps, PlayBook also leverages RIM’s security infrastructure and offers a much more secure option than Google or Apple. But the apps are a major issue today and with pricing on par with iPad ($599 for a 32 GB version), the PlayBook is hard to justify in comparison to the iPad.

Microsoft Crosses Swords with Cisco

2011-05-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

Microsoft surprised many observers today by announcing the acquisition of Skype. By now, I’ve already read at least a dozen articles about this acquisition and since my blogging is extracurricular, I had to wait until the kids were in bed. Therefore, I will try not to repeat what everyone else already said but rather examine the acquisition from a different perspective. I see Skype as a major move in Microsoft’s war on Cisco.

Cisco has been working on unified communications at least since their March 2007 acquisition of Webex. Unified communications (UC) makes a lot of sense for Cisco which had already dominated network communication with its routers and switches. Cisco has also made a lot of progress in Internet telephony or voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) as we like to call it. And once the human communication such as Webex was added to the picture, unified communication was born.

Skype is a Luxembourg-based company that was founded in 2003, acquired by eBay in October 2005 and Spun off to an investment group in November 2009. Skype is supposedly very profitable and with 170 million users, it is a tremendous asset. Skype has been clearly looking for a buyer since the spin-off and the possible suitors were rumored to be Facebook and Google. But in the end, Microsoft stole the show for a hefty price of $8.5 bln - the largest acquisition they’ve ever made.

The acquisition shows that Microsoft is willing to make big moves to get back at the new generation of competitors - from Facebook to Google and Apple. Microsoft is aggressively pursuing the mobile market with its own Windows Phone operating systems and a dozen or so partnerships with smartphone hardware manufacturers including Nokia who recently bet the farm on Windows Phone. And given that both mobility leaders, Apple and Google, have their own online communication offerings with Apple FaceTime and Google Voice, Microsoft needed to counter.

Skype offers great voice and video communication along with many advanced capabilities such as conferencing, voice mail, etc. But Skype will also give a great boost to Microsoft’s Lync offering. Lync is all about unified communications with capabilities such as presence, instant messaging, Web conferencing, and enterprise voice (VoIP). While some of the capabilities are duplicate between Skype and Lync, the very popular Skype service gives Microsoft a tremendous installed base as it straddles the consumer and the enterprise market which aligns well with Microsoft’s ambitions.

A major attraction of Skype for Microsoft must be its reach - it allows calls to non-Skype land-lines and mobile phones and it runs on practically all desktop and mobile operating systems. Contrast that with Apple’s FaceTime which only runs on iOS and Mac and thus faces an uphill adoption battle. Microsoft also needs to convince the carriers to embrace Windows Phone 7 devices and Skype might give them a great leverage or possibly an alternative.

With its focus on Lync and voice, however, Microsoft appears to have declared a war on Cisco. Cisco has been building out its unified communications business for several years with no major competition in sight and with a great leverage provided by its hardware business. Sure, Cisco competed with several unified communications players from Avaya to IBM and Siemens but none of them came even close to Cisco’s breath of offering and market presence. And the fact that all that voice and video traffic may cause customers to upgrade their hardware was an added benefit.

Well, that quiet time may be over now as Cisco found a mighty challenger in Microsoft. The Lync/Skype combination is a strong contender to Cisco’s collaboration and unified communications. Pretty exciting times, if you ask me!