By: Lauren Rose, PR Coordinator, Social Monsters Posted: 17th April 2013 Copyright Social Monsters © 2013

You know why you should listen to your elders? Because they've lived though it. They have fallen, and they have risen; they have had big ideas, taken risks, failed and succeeded. Whether it's a parent, boss, co-worker, spouse or idol, taking in all the advice and information you can not only shapes your business sense, but it helps you develop the passion and drive you need to succeed. 

Here are some of the best nuggets of advice from the world's top entrepreneurs:

Sir Richard Branson
The founder of Virgin Group was encouraged by his mum to have no regrets. It's a waste of time to look back on failure; Richard Branson advises us to use that time to develop new ideas. In a piece he wrote for LinkedIn, he explained how his mother is constantly starting new projects (like breeding parakeets and growing Christmas trees) and considers setbacks part of life's learning curve.

Imagine climbing a steep mountain. It's much easier to climb if you're facing forward and looking up. If you take time to look behind you, you instantly slow yourself down and have to reset for the upward climb.

Bob Parsons
CEO and founder of GoDaddy, Bob Parsons has 16 rules for success. Some important ones include:

• Never give up.
• Focus on what you want to happen.
• Don't let others push you around.
• Fair is what you pay to get on a bus (i.e., fare). Life isn't fair. You make your own breaks.
• Don't take yourself too seriously.

But the best might be what his father told him when he was struggling to get Parsons Technology up and running early on in his career. "Well, Robert, if it doesn't work, they can't eat you." What's the worst that could happen?

Martha Stewart
You can do anything you put your mind to. That is what Martha Stewart's father taught her at a very young age. And sometimes your desires change; sometimes, what you think you will get out of a job is much different than you had imagined. After a brief modeling career and a stint working as a stockbroker in New York City, Stewart knew she was interested in houses, landscape, design and cooking. After shifting directions and finding success in a small gourmet food market she opened, she found her niche and began a catering business, which in turn, launched her empire. When trying to discover your entrepreneurial passion, Stewart encourages people to consider their strengths, weaknesses, interests and desires. Ask yourself how hard you want to work. And believe in yourself.

Even a brief encounter with a stranger can change your life. Watch. Listen. And remember, as GoDaddy's Bob Parsons reminds us on his 16 rules list, "We're not here for a long time, we're here for a good time!"

Join the conversation: What is some of the best business advice you have gotten? Your response may change someone's life.

By: Bob Tarzey, Service Director, Quocirca Posted: 15th April 2013 Copyright Quocirca © 2013

A recent spate of targeted denial of service attacks on organisations such as Spamhaus and Bitcoin serve as a reminder that such attacks are widely used. Denial of service is the best way to attempt to halt or slow key internet-based services by those with a motive to do so. Many IT managers probably look-on, shrug their shoulders and say, “why would they target us? We are not a high profile internet service.”

This may be so; however, recent Quocirca research has shown how reliant all organisations are now the internet to communicate with both customers and partners (free report here: Digital identities and the open business). This is a double-edged sword. Of course, the internet has become key to enabling high speed automated transactions for many businesses, but from an IT security perspective it also means that those who want to can more easily disrupt the activity of a given business for any number of reasons. This can have both tangible and intangible consequences, for example slowing/stopping business or damaging reputation.

Denial of service is just one vector of attack. Another recent Quocirca research report shows that many European businesses have been impacted by a range of other network related attacks. Often these are not aimed at service disruption or damaging reputation but the theft of personal and/or financial data, in particular that relating to payment cards (see free report here: The trouble heading for your business).

'Low profile' businesses that do not deal much with personal data may still feel they are unlikely to be targeted. Don’t be so sure. Quocirca was talking with a small engineering firm the other day that was of just such a view. Later in the conversation it said it would be bidding for some work on the proposed controversial High Speed-2 (HS2) rail link. Hacktivists see small suppliers working on such projects as weak links and targeting them as a way of undermining the overall project. Any organisation can unexpectedly become a target.

There is a growing awareness of the dangers of both cybercrime and hacktivism shown by Quocirca’s recent research. Organisations are starting to invest in the defence measures necessary to defend themselves. This includes better understanding what is happening on the networks they rely on, especially as the formal network edge has dissolved in to a virtual perimeter that cannot be policed using traditional measures such as firewalls and intrusion prevention systems (IPS).

How European business are going about this and the degree of success they are having will be the subject of a webinar Wednesday April 17th titled 'It’s time for a new perimeter – protecting your IT infrastructure from malicious attacks' hosted by network defence specialist Corero; for more information and to register click here.

By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 8th April 2013 Copyright Quocirca © 2013

Anyone with a personal mobile phone will have seen the odd big bill, perhaps as a result of roaming or with tariffs where the bundled time, text and megabytes did not match the actual usage, or maybe just too many international calls. But most people only get stung once or twice. Once they understand the consequences of their usage, they can use less hungry data apps, perhaps get a different tariff, or switch from voice calls to text.

Or just pay, after all, tariffs are getting cheaper, bundles bigger and there’s always free Wi-Fi, right?

However, as soon as you introduce business use—whether on a work-supplied device or a ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD)—the picture gets a little murky. 

First who pays, and for what? In the recent halcyon days of all work-related mobile devices being corporate supplied on business tariffs most businesses would deal with the contract side covering all costs with some recovering from employees the cost of personal calls, if they could identify them.

Many employees would never see their individual bills and in some organisations only the finance department would have any idea, until things got really expensive. But hey, these mobile phones boosted the productivity of traders, sales and field service people so was it really a big deal? Not really, until many mobile users appeared, usage patterns changed, bills went up, budgets became tighter and organisations started to think about telecoms expense management (TEM). There are also legislative and tax issues that surround the who pays for personal usage issue.

Now with heavy data usage and employees as consumers wanting to, willing to and doing just about everything on their personally owned mobile phones and other devices, the business/personal usage line is almost impossible to draw.

These devices typically come with Wi-Fi, so that’s a free option? No, it may be free in certain quarters, but according to the latest research from enterprise mobility provider iPass, almost 60% of mobile workers have had to pay $20 or more for one-time Wi-Fi access. While some mobile and internet accounts have Wi-Fi access or minutes bundles, more often than not with a disjointed cacophony of providers, limited Wi-Fi account ‘roaming’ and quirky logins, much Wi-Fi usage outside the office is going to be paid for in an ad hoc manner, expensed and not tracked.

Does BYOD take the issue away? Not necessarily, as it depends whether there is BYOC (contract) as well, and even here the costs do not fall clearly.

Everything appears fine if the employee wants to pay for everything—business and personal use—on their own contract and tariff.

But that may not necessarily reduce costs overall. For a start, the organisation, especially if large or multi-national, would probably have a good deal on its corporate tariff, which personal tariffs just cannot match, so employees are likely to be paying higher rates than when contributing to business contracts.

Business tariffs will also be with one provider and might link into the fixed phone system so that ‘internal’ or ‘on net’ calls would be free or very low cost. With employees bringing their own contracts it is likely that multiple operators would be involved and inter-employee calling made more expensive than otherwise.

Employees may also balk at paying for business use or having business use take them closer to their personal data usage caps—but how are they going to claim? One off claims for Wi-Fi etc. may be easy, but this is again often going under the radar from the enterprise perspective if it only shows up on expenses rather than a telecommunications budget, so not really acceptable longer term. Finally, if business use is starting to dominate then changing behaviours to limit business usage for personal cost reasons undermines the whole idea of using mobile technology to enhance productivity.

The alternative of 'employee-choice with BYOD, but employer picks up the tab' is also fraught with challenges, as personal usage could go completely unchecked incurring not only a direct cost on the monthly bill, but also the indirect cost of time spent not working. This is always a risk, but if the employer is paying for everything on a personally chosen device, could easily be a big problem.

The reality is even more complex as employees will increasingly have a clutch of devices—smartphone, tablet, laptop—each with some element of work and personal use, some of which may be corporate supplied, others not. It may not be sensible or even possible anymore for employers to lock this whole situation down, but it is necessary to understand what is going on in order to keep some control of costs.

More thoughts about mobile expense management are in this recently revised and re-published Quocirca report.

By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 4th April 2013 Copyright Quocirca © 2013

The impact of new mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones might not altogether remove the need for desktop computers, but it does open up the potential for a really radical shift in how workplaces of the future might look.

For a start, the subtle way that even simple mobile phones increase flexibility in the working environment, even inside its boundary—no one needs to return to their personal desk to make or receive a call. With smart phones and tablets, all forms of communication can be achieved on the move—voice, text or video—and can be ‘unified’ around a corporate platform or ‘social’ around a consumer (or perhaps enterprise) platform.

The concept of ‘in’ and ‘out’ trays therefore seems a little dated, although most would admit the paperless office is still a distant dream So, does everyone need their own personal desk while in the building?

Since many now have working practices (and technology) that allows them to be productive outside the office environment—at home or out and about mobile—is there a case for revisiting the concept of shared desks to cover for the odd time when someone is in?

This idea of flexible working, hot-desking, or ‘hoteling’ is not new, but advances in mobile technologies, the ubiquity of wireless networks and the personal appetite for working on the move and seeing the office as a place for occasional use all gives it an extra boost.

So too does the potential for cost saving.

The cost of providing a typical desk in a city like London can easily run to over £10,000 per year, and the average across the UK is almost £6,000. Providing one for every employee, whether they are going to use it all the time or not, starts to look like an unnecessary extravagance, especially if all it is doing for many working hours is acting as a support for a few personal photos, memorabilia from past training courses and a never-inspected pile of (often unnecessary) paperwork.

Despite this, many companies as well as individuals, find it difficult to kick the mahogany (or aluminium and chipboard) habit. According to recent research conducted for Vodafone, just over a third of companies had not even considered flexible working to reduce costs, thought reducing desks was ‘inappropriate’ for their business or thought it would have a negative impact on teamwork.

A lot of the people-related preparatory work for switching to a flexible office can be a bit daunting and de-humanising. Terms such as ‘stacking density’ do little to boost morale and while most organisations and individuals would like to think they measure success by results rather than time in the office, presentee-ism still prevails and being seen in the office is perceived to have promotional value.

Technology can help with this, especially as so many consumers have been ‘converted’ to mobile, but it still needs careful management.

First the devices. Now that so many expect to BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to use at work, there are more types of devices to deal with, all with different and personal applications. User expectations are high, but still the organisation needs to secure its assets, especially data. Controls, policies and procedures need to be applied and, although user education has to be at the heart of it, automated management controls are vital to avoid costs spiralling, otherwise everyone might as well be given a desk.

Next come the networks. Most organisations have an infrastructure designed around people sat in fixed and known locations, and even desk swapping raises issues—“that’s my PC!” or “why can’t this phone ring with my incoming calls?”. Wireless networks, where they are present, are often oriented around laptops. So connectivity may be available in the places where people can sit and ‘de-camp’, but there may be insufficient coverage and capacity to deal with lower powered radios in devices such as most smartphones AND tablets.

The network capacity will also need to be increased, but also in a flexible, dynamic and automated way. Increased use of video and ‘chatty’, more social collaboration—good for bringing diverse and dispersed teams closer together—impacts on the network, especially if users are mobile and video usage is ad hoc and unpredictable.

In a flexible office, even the traditional desktop (yes, they’re unlikely to disappear completely just yet) is affected. The network needs to be able to cope with delivering services to different users in different places at different times. User authentication and delivery of their services to the spot they’re currently occupying requires sophisticated and predictable management.

The working world may be coming much more mobile, but in the flexible office one thing is still fixed—the need to manage everything as simply, seamlessly and automatically as possible.

This article first appeared on http://www.computerweekly.com and is based on a webinar conducted with Kaseya UK

By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 27th March 2013 Copyright Quocirca © 2013

The recent announcement at Yahoo! about cutting down working from home and getting employees to come into the office seems to have put a virtual cat among several distributed pigeons. It might be that there are a number of remote, disgruntled and disaffected employees who are simmering remotely out there in distant cyber space who are not getting the message about how the business needs to be changed, but this appears to be a very public way to conduct change management.

One thing is sure, it has brought many opinions, fears and prejudices about work out into the open.

First there is the feeling among many who do not or cannot work from home, that all those who do must be ‘tele-shirking’, i.e. not really working but being subject to a thousand and one distractions—was that the doorbell? I’ll just vacuum the hall and make another cup of coffee. 

This feeling also pervades many managers; after all, if you can’t see each and every one of the workers, how do you know if they’re really working or not? This may sound a bit old-fashioned shop floor or weaving mill with an overseer or foreman at one end of a line of workers, literally keeping an eye on them as they work. But, a quick glance around most modern offices and business park facilities will show glass-fronted offices for managers and open plan seating areas for ‘the workers’. Plus ca change?

On the flip side there is the understandable fear of remote workers that those in the office get more ‘real’ time and therefore influence with the boss. This might translate into better opportunities for pay rises and promotions for those able to maximise their visibility and more frequently get the ear of their manager.

Surely technology fixed this? After all, those working from home will be connected via the internet right into the heart of the corporate enterprise IT systems, they will most likely have mobile phones and may even have video conferencing, desktop sharing tools and unified communications. They can phone, email, chat, text, video call, collaborate with a whole variety of tools—in or out of the office—as much as they like and, with open IP networks, pretty cheaply. So much so that one company banned the use of email for internal communications as it seemed like employees were doing it too much.

So why should it really matter where people are?

Past Quocirca research once indicated a fear of loss of organisational culture if people were working too much while mobile or at home, and some commentators think this might be what Yahoo! is trying to address. However, simply bringing a number of individuals who were simmering at home back together is unlikely to stimulate upbeat and innovative water cooler conversations, but more likely a seething cauldron of gripes.

The underlying problem is unlikely to be either one of technology or location, but management. That’s not just the day-to-day operational stuff of goal-setting, nurturing, mentoring, delegating, support, feedback, correction and reward, but also the higher level direction of who we are, why we’re here and what we do.

This does not mean a meaningless buzzword-laden mission statement that people smirk at, but a credible corporate culture that employees can relate to, sign up to or decide is not for them and move out. It can be as simple as “don’t be evil” or as prescriptive as a training program, but either way it has to be consistent, applied from the top of the organisation to the bottom and understood by everyone.

That underpins the relationship with customers, suppliers, partners, peers, subordinates and managers, which then has to be supported by the right operational management tools. This is the crucial bit that makes it all work, or not, and this is one area where the development of management skills has been lacking in recent years—especially people, time and process management. Technology can then play a part in supporting that, but only if people are taught how to use it—not the functional aspects they pick up or eventually read from manuals, but how to get the best out of it to perform a specific task.

At one time companies put their staff on courses to develop soft skills, with many of them geared towards some particular technology or communications medium. Time management for using their new Filofaxes; responsive communications e.g. how to answer the phone politely and in under three rings; take ownership of any issues; how to conduct effective meetings (hint: search online for “John Cleese meetings”).

Some may laugh and say this sort of training is no longer relevant to today’s busy workforce, but the inability to control communications overload, collaborate effectively with colleagues, manage remote or distributed workforces seems a little too widespread. Simply throwing more communications tools at employees, or even allowing them to bring their own, is not the answer on its own, but taking them away is not a step in the right direction.

By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 26th March 2013 Copyright Quocirca © 2013

Things change, but recent advances in technology, coupled with social changes, are changing the work/life balance, and not in the way that was once expected. Shorter days and more leisure time was a twentieth century dream for the twenty first century world of work, but the reality is somewhat different.

At one time, information and communications technology (ICT) for the working environment was only made accessible to a select few, controlled by central diktat and superior to anything you were likely to see at home. Now the complete opposite is true and consumerised IT not only extends the working day into individuals’ personal lives, but also allows them choices and to bring their personal devices (BYOD) and activities—especially social communications—into the main hours of the working day.

While this blurring may not be an issue, providing employees do not push too much personal activity so as to be a detriment to their work, it does create other challenges.

One in particular is related to another change, but this time instigated by the organisation. There is an increasing need to open up business applications to communicate and share information with users outside of the organisation. This includes outside the physical boundaries and the need to share with employees on the move or working from home, but also outside the corporate boundaries to contractors, third party suppliers, business customers and even consumers. The reasons for this are to improve relationships with customers, transact directly with them and to more tightly integrate the supply chain.

Organisations are themselves also increasingly using social media to do this as they feel that it will make it easier to identify, communicate with and retain customers.

The problem then is how and what to share, and will it be safe?

Up until recently the main method of sharing information remotely with anyone external would either be physical media—CD, memory stick, etc.—especially for large volumes of data; or, more often for smaller volumes, email. Most organisations are relatively confident they can secure email sharing, and there are certainly many tools to support this and minimise data leakage.

Physical media is more tricky and, as mobile devices have become increasingly prevalent, this increases the physical device risk further. This might be by direct connection through USB such as memory sticks (although 'podslurping' was a term coined for downloading gigabytes to a connected iPod) or over the air through a cellular or Wi-Fi connection.

The risks this brings through the potential loss or theft of device are well known and understood, with mobile device management (MDM) protections often put in place to lock or wipe, and sometimes, though not frequently enough, through on-device encryption. There are also those who avoid data residing on the device at all through virtual connections that leave no permanent data footprints.

However, a greater risk comes from user behaviours related to the increasing use of social media—posting or sharing something 'out there' on the internet. This might be as an update to 'friends' via a social media site or a dedicated cloud storage provider.

Either way it is potentially out of sight from an enterprise perspective, as employees will be using their own preferred tools to create a Bring Your Own Cloud or Collaboration (BYOC) experience. If this casual and informal usage translates into how official or formal information is shared with third party businesses and consumers, the organisation is not in control, making the demonstration of compliance virtually impossible and increasing security risks.

It might be that enterprise IT has its own set of endorsed tools for information sharing via cloud based services, but the blurring of boundaries in employee behaviour may make the use of these difficult to enforce, especially if employees have been allowed or even encouraged to BYOD in an uncontrolled manner. One way or another, lax behaviour may need to be reined in, monitored or checked.

By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 5th February 2013 Copyright Quocirca © 2013

Quocirca has recently published a free checklist to help those looking at investing in self-service solutions. So, why might it be useful?

Well, there has been a rush in the UK in recent retail situations towards customer self-service and automation. Pay at pump petrol stations, self-checkout tills and so on.

The reasons for this are presented as ‘customer convenience’, but it is pretty clear that it is all too often about cutting costs and too little thought is given as to how to how it might affect the overall customer experience.

Specialist retailers will argue they have to do this in order to compete with online or other, higher footfall, locations such as supermarkets, hypermarkets and shopping malls.

There may be some truth in this but, by simply commoditising the shopping experience, those making knee-jerk decisions to automate customer service run the risk of further business decline.

Clearly something is amiss as so many major and well established specialist companies have disappeared and continue to do so, mainly with a wail about “habits have changed”, “it’s all gone online” after they have narrowed stock ranges, made the stores feel like warehouses and trained the staff to be as friendly as a bent nail.

The best (and surviving) retailers—whether online, mobile or physical stores—provide service excellence irrespective of the technology or channel. Automation and self-service has a very important part to play in all these routes to the market, but it has to be delivered with the customer in mind, not simply as a cost cutting exercise.

The first thing to realise is that self-service is not a standalone tool or alternative to existing processes, but has to be integrated into the wider business in order to be successful. It should be viewed as a strategic and well-researched investment, not a simple tactical option. For this reason, the decision-making process of how to implement self-service and what solutions or tools to should be implemented has to be well thought out and comprehensive.

To start with, an organisation must identify why the move to self-service is being made in the first place and what the main requirements are. There may be a cost reduction element, but how important are other matters such as increasing cross-channel co-ordination or improving customer service levels and internal communications?

For example, are customers automatically invited to chat if their website interaction indicates they might need help or can support agents see what customers have done, requested or replied in order to avoid duplication of effort on the part of the customer?

However, this process may reveal that there are underlying issues with poor business systems, such as lack of a formal handover at shift changes or problem departments—e.g. a technical group refusing to get involved in customer contact. These will need to be addressed separately to the implementation process as simply deploying self-service alone will not fix these internal problems.

Next consider which suppliers will need to be approached and investigated. As well as taking the partisan views of the vendors themselves and some of their ‘tame’ customers, dig deeper and find out the broader market perspectives from a wider mix of customers, perhaps through trade shows and conferences. Industry analyst perceptions may also be valuable, but be aware that some analyst houses may overlook specialist or niche vendors and it is best to take a broad view.

The bulk of any product or service suitability assessment will come down to comparing features and functions, and a checklist will be useful. However, as this is an important investment, it is always important to check the people, company and its current client base of an intended supplier to get the full insight.

It is never easy going through the process by oneself, and even self-service benefits from some sort of external guidance. So for an idea of how to approach the self-service product and vendor selection process, download a free checklist.

This article first appeared on http://www.computerweekly.com

By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 29th November 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

M2M (machine to machine) has enjoyed a decade or so of market push and occasional hype, yet still seems not to be meeting its full potential—why is that?

Firstly, the predictions for growth and market opportunities are huge but often hard to compare objectively. Some talk of the number of deployments, others the number of devices (billions), and yet others the numbers of cellular connections (100s of millions). There have also been predictions of M2M revenues running into tens of billions of dollars by the late 2010s.

Then some of the terminology isn’t helpful. When George Colony predicted in the 1990s that light bulbs would eventually have IP addresses it conjured up the sort of imagery popular in the BBC TV programme, Tomorrow’s World, and possibly ABC’s ‘The Jetsons’. Others started to use the equally futuristic term ‘the internet of things’ and talk of connected consumer appliances and hint that, with M2M communications, technology ‘can do anything’.

Yes it can, but only if someone thinks it is sufficiently worthwhile to spend money on, and the problem with many grand M2M schemes is that several different agendas have to be brought into line, business processes need to evolve, and there has to be broad acceptance from all stakeholders. These are much harder to achieve than fixing some of the technical challenges, and even harder when the value chain is distorted or has the wrong centre of gravity, say towards a ‘bitpipe’ connectivity provider such as a mobile operator. M2M, like many applications of technology, should start with a business need in a business process, not with a choice of communications or even software platform.

The market sizing is also fraught with problems. Sure it could be big, but the revenue split is complicated, going to a mix of hardware vendors, software vendors and network service providers. When would this be cannibalising other revenue, and from where or whom? Perhaps most critically of all for certain M2M projects, over what timeframe?

While consumers of mobile phones are used to upgrading or changing once every year or two, many M2M deployments will see devices and entire systems in place for ten years or more. One of the flagships of the M2M application landscape is smart meters—for electricity, gas and other utilities—but these types of metering devices typically have an average lifetime of twenty or more years. That would span over several generations of mobile cellular technologies, so clearly the return over time of investment is going to be much more important.

This has to work for all stakeholders too—suppliers, government/legislators, right down to the end consumer.  Returning to application posterchild of the M2M movement—smart meters—it seems that even enlightened consumers are generally unconvinced of their value and many others are simply not aware of smart meters at all. Utility companies are not helping. For example, in the UK, electricity suppliers do not provide consumer microgenerator sites (houses with solar panels) with import/export meters, so it is impossible to gauge just how much power is being fed back in. Smart meters and smart grids need to begin with some smart thinking and consumer engagement.

The underlying problem is that the M2M space has been too focused on the underlying plumbing—network connectivity, provisioning platforms and billing—and has not done enough to build application platforms and ecosystems of coherent and deployable solutions that meet business needs.

Building a solid foundation with interoperable standards is necessary, but not sufficient on its own, and it is indicative of the overly telecoms-centric approach of many in the M2M space. What is needed for the next stage of real growth is a more innovative and fast paced IT application style approach, that combines open technology with an equitable sharing of the opportunity and its rewards.  That means away from the infrastructure providers and towards developers—a model made successful in different eras by Microsoft, Sun and Apple.

The infrastructure is still vital, but M2M applications require seamless universal coverage, not cherry picked silos, and even where wireless connectivity is vital, cellular is not always the most appropriate technology and there are a number of alternatives that might prove much more suitable in the mix. For example ZigBee standards provide a low cost way for devices to communicate over short distances, and the low frequency radio technology proposed SmartReach (a consortium of Arqiva, Detica and BT) offers long range, in-building penetration at a lower data rate that is more than sufficient for a smart grid or smart meter solution.

The industry just needs to smarten up a little and think about the needs of the application, not the re-marketing of existing plumbing.

By: Ruth Cheesley, MD, Virya Technologies Posted: 26th November 2012 Copyright Virya Technologies © 2012

Google has been tweaking its algorithms (the systems it uses to identify how relevant it's links are to the search terms entered) over the years, with a view to improving the user experience and promoting results that are more relevant and abide by their recommended guidelines relating to search engine optimisation. Two updates were released in recent history which have hit some sites particularly hard. This article will cover the Google update first seen in February 2011 and later rolled out internationally in August 2011 known as 'Panda' or 'Farmer', and the more recent Penguin update.

What is the Panda update?
Panda was first rolled out on February 23 2011 and hit many sites very hard. It was perhaps one of the first Google updates that made people sit up and pay attention to Google's recommended Best Practice guidelines <http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3>, and realise that some widely used practices were actually going against these guidelines. Up to 12% of search results were impacted by this update, which is a very significant amount. Subsequent updates are being made to the original Panda update, which further refine the original algorithm updates.

Panda cracked down heavily on thin content (pages which don't have relevant content of their own, but simply exist to push users to another resource—think landing pages, cloned sites, parked pages filled with adsense links, etc).

Also targeted were content farms, sites with high advert-to-content ratios (therefore more focused on revenue generation than serving relevant and useful content), and a range of other quality issues, including duplicated content.

Panda hit Europe around April 2011, which, for many business owners, was the first time they had heard about Google algorithms updates.

The issue with this update was that your entire domain was penalised not just the offending pages—so your 'bad' pages will drag down your 'good' pages if you do nothing about it.

An analysis by Sistrix <http://www.sistrix.com/blog/985-google-farmer-update-quest-for-quality.html> makes for interesting reading. Some of the sites hit particularly hard include wisegeek.com, ezinearticles.com, associatedcontent.com and many more. Most of the sites either focus in revenue generation from heavy use of intrusive advertising or are simply sites where people can post content which is often posted elsewhere and isn't unique or adding value—some even scrape content from other sources.

However, sites which focus on useful content with lower levels of advertising such as wikihow.com, answers.yahoo.com, ehow.com and more were promoted in rankings as a result of the Panda update.

What to do about it?
Doing nothing is simply not an option. Proactive, positive action is required to recover from both Panda and the subsequent Penguin updates. It will take time, money and effort. Recovery will most likely require a dramatic 're-examination' of your marketing approach.

Steps to resolving Panda-related issues

• Seek out and fix duplicated content
• Deal with poor content
• Stop writing poor content!
• Look for other issues raised by Webmasters tools

What is Penguin about?
The Penguin update was rolled out as the next major algorithm update since Panda, on 24th April 2012. Rather than addressing links which contained poor quality content, this algorithm update addressed sites which were not adhering to Google's Best Practice guidelines <http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3> relating to 'spamming'—whether this be through keyword stuffing, paying for inbound links, or artificially increasing traffic to a website. Google suggested that around 3% of links were affected by this update—significantly less than the earlier Panda update.

Penguin predominantly addressed issues regarding the 'profile' of links coming into your website. Google deals with a serious amount of web pages, and does an incredible amount of analysis on the links between pages and between sites. It has developed algorithms to identify what it deems to be an 'un-natural' link profile. Some examples of what may be deemed to be an unnatural link profile might be:

• Sponsored templates displaying a link to the creator's website on every page
• Paid-for links into your site
• Poor quality reciprocal links (for example to sites which are unrelated to yours)
• Link networks such as buildmyrank.com <http://searchengineland.com/google-eliminates-another-link-network-116513>
• Link farms (for example having a site which exists purely to push users to another site)

The Penguin update set out to address this issue, and de-indexed links from sites it deemed to have an un-natural link profile.

Ultimately, sites which have been affected by the Penguin update will have done something to artificially increase the traffic landing on their site, and Google's response to this is, at best, simply to drop all its links for that domain or, if you're lucky, to disregard all the link value which was coming from the 'un-natural' sources.

Steps to resolving Penguin-related issues

• Identify if you have a problem in your Google Webmasters account
• Deal with bad links
• Reconsider your marketing strategy so that it no longer falls fould of Penguin
• Implement a social media engagement strategy
• Don’t conceal things – hiding links behind a shortener, cloaking URL’s and ‘spammy’ anchor text on incoming links.
• Consider your off-site link building strategy

In conclusion, recovery from Panda and Penguin is possible, but it takes time and resources—and, in some cases, a different way of approaching the design, development and marketing of your website and/or your ideas/products. Good quality, unique content is becoming far more important than duplicated content across lots of different sources, and creating natural traffic sources is absolutely critical. Keep the quality high, manage distribution and get rid of poor quality content that may be damaging the rest of your site in order to move forward.

By: Clive Longbottom, Head of Research, Quocirca Posted: 21st November 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

At a recent Dell roundtable event on the future of cloud computing, the discussion centred around how cloud was not being adopted wholesale by many organisations yet. Various reasons were put forward, such as fear of change, fear of losing control, security issues and so on. A little while later on, several people were pushing the case for cloud around its capability to enable innovation.

Sure, cloud computing can provide a different way of doing things and can encourage a completely different way of facilitating business process – but if this is pushed as the main way that cloud works, then surely all that is happening is that users will be put off more? If fear of change is a factor to scare organisations off from using cloud, then moving critical business workloads to a relatively unproven emerging platform AND changing the way the application runs has to be enough not only to put the techies off the change, but also the business?

The view put forward by Quocirca was that organisations could start with a low-risk approach. If base level workloads such as file and print, email, payroll and so on were taken and moved onto a cloud architecture where resources could be shared in a flexible and dynamic manner, organisations could see that cloud worked and was ready for the higher level and more complex workloads.

At this stage, mayhem ensued. Several cries went up that this was just virtualisation, and not cloud. Why? Because it did not have self-service.

OK, the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) definition of cloud boils it down to 5 mandatory capabilities for cloud – broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, a measured service – and self-service. But just how important is self-service at a corporate level?

When salesforce.com first came to prominence, the biggest issue that Quocirca heard from organisations was that users were signing up to the service off their own bat, without involving IT. Therefore control was lost and new islands of functionality and data were being created that harmed the overall effectiveness of the business. In this case – and many others where externally sourced functions were easily available, such as Dropbox, self-service was a problem, not an advantage.

For simple reasons of governance risk and compliance, organisations need control over what their employees, consultants, contractors and partners can provision to themselves. Rules need to be in place and means of dealing with exceptions. NIST does not cover this in its definition, and therefore, Quocirca believes that it is too simple and is therefore flawed.

Let's look at it a different way: if a platform is connected to the internet, then it has broad access – even if there are then systems in place to ensure that only select users can get through to it. If it uses shared resources, it may just be virtualisation. Even if measurement tools are in place to audit and present reports on usage, it may still only be virtualisation. If the resource pool that is made available through virtualisation can be applied dynamically to the workloads, then this is pushing the capabilities of virtualisation. Does the lack of self-service stop such a dynamic platform from being a cloud service?

If we take the dynamic resource platform and layer tools upon it, for example Remedy, such that a user can raise a ticket to request that a service is made available to them, and the actions to do this are all automated, does this then make the platform a true cloud? If so, then something is wrong, as the self-service is not part of the platform itself – it could well be served by Remedy running on a separate physical server, yet Remedy allows for highly granular control over how services are allocated and provides a solid audit of what was done where and when.

If cloud is going to more rapidly adopted, then low-risk use cases are going to be needed to be demonstrated to the mainstream organisations. Trying to get them to move mission-critical enterprise apps from a known, already well-managed environment to one where they have worries is not the way to do it. To then quibble over whether a platform is cloud or not just because a user cannot automatically demand 14ZB of storage and 43 different email addresses is not going to help.

If the platform provides elasticity of resources for multiple different workloads and is connected to a broad group of people, then as far as Quocirca is concerned, it is cloud.

Oh – and for the purists, then sticking to the letter of the definition means that "private cloud" can never exist: it does not come under the necessary "broad network access" definition.

By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 6th November 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

Many of the online forum comments following the surprise departure from Apple of former Dixon’s chief John Browett indicate that while ‘clicks’ might be replacing ‘bricks’, customer service is still a significant demand. The comments might read as a little damming to anyone from Dixons, but they clearly show that having too few, dis-interested shop assistants lacking product knowledge, but still wanting to pump up add-on sales is not the way to sell technology.

Some of Apple’s followers may be a little too fervent to care whether it’s good or bad, but Apple’s in-store support and customer service seems to be appreciated by those with no fanatical allegiances. In Apple stores no one seems to be ushered off ‘having a play’ with the stock, staff are plentiful and knowledgeable, after sales support is generally pretty good. No wonder that there were concerns that someone from Dixons might change things to a more traditionally ‘pile-em-high’, cut the costs accountant-driven high street model.

A penny pinching supplier can also be a real turn off in B2B transactions, especially for smaller customers to larger suppliers. The mantra for many suppliers, when times were good, oriented around avoiding ‘not leaving money on the table’, i.e. making sure that they took a larger share of the customers wallet by up-selling, cross-selling and leaving less room for 3rd parties. Dress this up as benefits for the customer—fewer suppliers to deal with, fully integrated, complete solution—and it all looks fine.

In these tighter economic times however, many companies are looking for better value. This means that sometimes customers will split up their buying, shop around to try to get better deals while suppliers will try harder to increase revenues and preserve margins.

The temptation for larger companies in the supply chain is to exert even more financial pressure. This is especially the case when senior management has taken cost-cutting measures too far (usually led by the financial director and their accountants). There are several symptoms of this:

• taking much longer to pay suppliers, especially smaller ones with less legal clout or ability to chase.
• incrementally charging customers for things that might have once been free or at least delivered as part of a bigger project, but now being broken out and separately charged for.
• Viewing customer service simply as an unnecessary cost that can be cut or trimmed to the bone.

None of these elevate the perception of a company in the eyes of its suppliers or its customers. Large companies may appear to get away with such behavior for a while, but it will increase pent-up resentment in both customers and suppliers, who will at some point switch. Smaller companies will take action faster as word of mouth is an even more important influencer of new business for them.

The increasing use of online and social media for sharing experiences only exacerbates the risk of any switching point being sudden and unexpected, especially for changes that adversely affect customer service. Good reputations take a long time and a lot of effort to build up, but news of bad experiences travels fast and brands and reputations can be destroyed while marketing folk sleep.

It might have been that the former Dixon’s man’s face didn’t fit, rather than a reaction to any changes he was trying to usher in, but the latest news of the other UK consumer retail giant, Comet, entering administration underlines this is a very difficult market. It might also indicate that cut price doesn’t cut the mustard if service standards are cut too.

By: Clive Longbottom, Head of Research, Quocirca Posted: 6th September 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

Many organisations look to the cloud to provide some level of contingency against their own systems going down, be it off-site data backup, failover servers for business applications, or the use of high-availability servers and software. The level of disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) a given organisation chooses to put in place will vary according to its own risk appetite and budget.

The degree to which cloud services are suitable for providing a safety blanket will vary from one case to another. So which one is right for your organisation?

The following use case scenarios provide some guidance, starting with the most basic level of data backup and moving to full business continuity.

1. Simple data backup – the cloud can act as an external storage system where files can be stored so that if there is a problem with on-premise storage, individual files can be recovered, or images of specific machines can be restored to a device. This can be very cost effective – but as with similar on-premise solutions, there will be a level of down-time while the data is identified and restored to the live environment. Also, large amounts of data will take a long time to be recovered over the internet – which is why Quocirca recommends that data be recovered from the cloud to a local physical device which is then couriered to the customer’s site and then recovered to the target storage system at local area network (LAN) speeds. However, the service provider may be able to offer additional archiving services that could work well for compliance needs (as Quocirca points out in a previous blog post)
2. Secondary data storage. The cloud can be used as the place where a mirror of existing data is kept. Then, when there is a failure in an on-premise data storage device, systems can failover to use the data being stored in the cloud. Although this may look as if it provides good levels of business continuity, organisations must bear in mind that providing data to on-premise applications from outside the data centre may lead to latency issues, and that the synchronisation of live data may not be as easy as first thought.
3. Primary data storage – no data is stored on-premise, instead being held directly in the cloud. Although this should provide better data availability due to how the cloud provider architects its storage platform, the latency from the on-premise application to the data will generally make this a non-viable option. However, data backup and restore is now being carried out at LAN speed.
4.  Applications and data are held in the cloud, with data back-up and restore being integrated. This moves the application and data closer to each other so that direct latency is no longer an issue. As long as the application supports web-based access effectively, the user experience should by good. Should the prime data storage be impacted, restores can be carried out at LAN speed so recovery time objective (RTO) is shortened. However, this only provides data continuity – if the application goes down, the organisation will still be unable to carry out its business.
5. Applications being used as virtual machines with data being mirrored. This is getting closer to real business continuity. By using applications that have been packaged as a virtual machine, the failure of a single instance of the application can be rapidly fixed through just spinning up a new instance. Data needs to be covered as well, and should be mirrored to a different storage environment so that there is a high level of data availability in place. Such an approach can lead to recovery times measured in a few minutes, and will be enough for many organisations. This is also known as a “cold standby”, as standby virtual machines are not running all the time.
6. Stand-by business continuity. Here, the stand-by application virtual machine is permanently “spinning” (i.e. provisioned), but is not part of the live environment. On the failure of the live image, pointers can be moved over to the stand-by image in a matter of seconds, using existing or mirrored data storage. Also known as “hot standby”, as the virtual machines are ready to take over as soon as a failure occurs.
7. Full business continuity. Here, everything is provisioned to at least an “N+1” level. Multiple data storage silos are mirrored on a live basis and multiple live application virtual machines are maintained. Workloads are balanced between the virtual machines, and two-level commit is used on data to ensure that any problem with the data itself is not mirrored across all the data stores at the same time. This is the approach used by large organisations that have to have the capability to continue working through a systems failure – but is outside of the cost capabilities of the majority of other organisations. Cloud computing can bring such a capability into the reach of more organisations through the economies of scale.

Obviously, there are cost issues as the amount of cover increases through the table. This is why any organisation must first understand its corporate risk profile, building up a picture of exactly what business risks it cannot afford to carry and that which it is capable of carrying. Once a risk profile has been created, the right level of technical 'insurance' can be found from a cloud or hosting provider. The cloud makes the costs less of an issue, as each level can be offset through the number of organisations that are sharing the infrastructure. Therefore, an organisation that has previously regarded business continuity out of its reach and has settled for disaster recovery can now look to the cloud to create a more business-capable platform.

Originally posted at Lunacloud Compute & Storage Blog

By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 5th September 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

At one time for some in the telecoms industry, Pretty Awesome New Stuff (PANS) was the futuristic counterpoint to POTS - plain old telephone systems.

However for the IT industry, PANs were a slightly different concept. There was a local-area network, or LAN, in the office, the wide-area network, or WAN, to connect across the world - so why not have a short-range network that a person could carry?

Apart from the wireless connection of ancillary gadgets using technologies such as Bluetooth, the idea faded in the early days of PDAs and mobile phones as hopes rose that there would eventually be a universal mobile device superseding the need to carry several.

So much for that idea. Most people now carry even more devices, and since they also expect universal connectivity, they all want to be on a wireless network.

Enter the mobile operators and wireless-card providers with embedded cellular modules for laptops and then tablets: but try getting a unified contract for one person that covers a range of cellular devices they might happen to be carrying.

However, the mix of sales of Apple’s iPad reveals an interesting statistic. Only around a tenth of iPads sold appear to have a cellular connection. It should be no surprise that the preference is towards wi-fi as, after all, many will be used as a casual device while roaming around the home or office.

But so low a ratio might also have something to do with the difficulty of getting the right sort of cellular data deal as well as the high-price hike for cellular connectivity in the iPad.

Personal wireless access points
The low cost and availability of personal wireless access points that have sprung up might also have something to do with it. With a 3G or 4G backhaul link and the opportunity to link several devices via a wi-fi hub, they are a simple and useable proposition.

In theory, mobile phones that support wi-fi and offer personal hotspot functionality are attractive, too - until you realise how much the mobile operator charges for personal hotspot usage. It would seem that mobile operators do not like the idea of a cellular connection being shared across several devices, even if they belong to the same user, unless they can charge directly for it.

Added value of personal-area network
Rather than sticking with this bill-by-the-minute-and-megabyte mentality, is it possible to think of the different aspects of added value that a PAN might be able to deliver?

In addition to connectivity, what else do the users of several devices need and what might they be willing to pay for in a personal hub?

Some common physical hub ideas have been tried over the years - such as storage or unified messaging - but today most would rightly expect these to be common services delivered by the cloud.

Some services that make use of the physical attributes of a mobile hub might add value to the user - for example, using it as a store of power, a shared battery, or a shared ID or authentication token - but it is difficult to tie this into what it might do for an operator.

One thing is clear, there is little or no money to be made from operators marketing and selling the basic communications hardware - not when companies such as Huawei can make 3G USB dongle or wi-fi routers that can be retailed so cheaply.

Over time, charging extra for multiple device connections by one user is more likely to create frustration, rather than loyalty and extra use, so there needs to be an alternative.

The femtocell option
Some think that another form of fixed cellular hub, the femtocell, might also have other functionality and applications beyond simply being a communication relay.

After all, such an access point knows when mobile users arrive home or leave it and could be used for external connections in, say, remote monitoring or control, as well as regular use indoors.

While this femtocell-as-an-application-platform idea still has further to go to bear real fruit, it could form the basis for how to add value for its mobile cousin - an open software platform for applications, running on a PAN hub device or femtoserver.

A device such as this needs to prove its value to the user to be carried when more than a mobile phone connection is required.

But a portable resource for connectivity, power, secure storage or ID that runs local network applications across an individual’s collection of gadgets might not only appeal to the individual, but also operators and, if opened up, application developers too?

This article first appeared on http://www.techrepublic.com

By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 31st August 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

Within a few short years and only three product iterations, Apple has created and still dominates the touch screen tablet market. There have been touch screen devices before, including Apple’s Newton from 1987 and even a tablet PC form factor launched by Microsoft in the early 2000s, yet Apple’s iPad is still generally seen as the tablet device to aspire to.

It’s a premium product at a premium price, yet Apple’s high volumes enable it to make a profit while keeping the bill of materials costs down. Simply undercutting the price with a less sophisticated device has not been a winning strategy as yet.

It’s not that competitors haven’t been trying and some have been doing well, but there have already been some challengers fading as those not completely accustomed to the faster and fickle pace of retail products and the speed of consumerisation of the enterprise hit obstacles.

HP, Dell, Cisco and RIM/BlackBerry have all stumbled with their tablet offerings and, while Avaya has persisted with its more specialised tablet to support its ‘Flare’ experience, this is not the high volume end of the market to dent Apple’s market share.

However, Google found a number of OEM takers for its Android software platform. Asus, Acer, Motorola, Sony and Archos have all produced acceptable tablet devices, but none quite matching the slickness of the iPad or taking much from its market share, despite generally being cheaper.

Of the traditional mobile manufacturers only Samsung has successfully taken the fight to Apple with its impressive Galaxy Tabs. That was until Amazon released its Kindle range with the Fire, stepping up from supplying e-readers to fully functioning tablets. Barnes and Noble have also taken similar steps with its Nook ranges of e-readers and tablets.

While Android is a common factor in all the above, it’s not always sufficiently common to ensure compatibility, and in cases like Kindle and the Nook, compatibility is not a driving factor—the sale of media content is. These devices are deliberately low cost to support the ‘razor and blades’ model of loss-leading initial acquisition, with repeat on-going purchases delivering the longer-term margins.

It's a good approach to business, but it does require very deep pockets and a ready supply of something to sell over time. This can be software owned and supplied by the hardware manufacturer in the way the dedicated gaming device market has evolved; software supplied through a controlled marketplace, like the Apple App Store; or content aggregated from third parties and sold through a complete retail experience, such as Amazon or iTunes.

The lines between applications and content continue to blur, with in-app purchasing being increasingly used in games and magazine-like applications, so it is increasingly a retail consumer model rather than a traditional IT one. This method of aftersales requires a broad constituency of ready ‘players’ for the content purchased by users.

As the battle for the tablet market hots up, it is becoming clear that the media and services delivered are becoming as much, and probably more, important than the devices themselves.

The resurgence of Microsoft in the tablet platform arena, not only with a revitalised operating system, but also a combined hardware and software offering direct from itself with its Surface range of tablets, means some rather interesting changes are on the way.

Apple would appear, despite the apparent ‘perfectness’ of the iPad’s current size, to be planning to release a smaller version. This would undoubtedly be a lower cost device, perhaps coming down aggressively to play in the same space as the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7, but retaining high quality and specification to avoid eroding the brand value and cachet all that Apple has worked hard to engender.

This might be possible with Apple’s buying power and deep pockets, but would be made easier with more ‘blades’ to offer customers, if it steps further into the video and TV content space, as long expected.

The tablet competitive position of Microsoft became even more intriguing recently as it has emerged that its new Surface RT tablet might also be very aggressively priced, yet still pretty highly spec’d. This will undoubtedly upset Microsoft’s OEM hardware partners, but might herald Microsoft’s first really assertive move into growing mobile marketshare for the “true” Windows platform (as opposed to Windows Phone).

Control of the hardware and software avoids some of the incompatibility issues that affect the devices based on various versions of Android and lets Microsoft set the selling price. If it wants to adopt a razor and blades model it can, just as long as it can identify the blades. It has done so successfully with the subsidised Xbox through Live and will replicate this using a similar idea with the new tablet.

That would unsettle the Androids, even Samsung and Kindle, and could take a bite off Apple. However, to avoid being another ‘Zune’ (a music and content store doomed by being US-only), the approach needs to combine Microsoft’s grasp on the enterprise from the server and legacy desktop-end with a consumerist mobile appeal that embraces home and office use. It also needs to delve deep into its pockets and self-belief.

The mobile market is fast moving and whereas Apple has been riding high, it is only just beginning to face real competition. With a new iPhone and smaller iPad coming through soon, it is unlikely that we will see much change in the iPad’s underlying capabilities and market position.

Nonetheless, the advent of a true Windows slate, priced aggressively, is going to really shake things up in the tablet space. Apple knows this, hence the potential move to a 7-inch slate. If Microsoft is given an inch in the market it will steal a mile before the second half of 2013.

Microsoft’s £200 Windows Surface RT could very well be the biggest challenger to Apple’s business model yet with its high-end media capabilities, enhanced security, Office applications, and army of dedicated developers. 

The tablet space is about to get very interesting.

By: Clive Longbottom, Head of Research, Quocirca Posted: 1st August 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

A recent meeting with a company was a rare thing for an industry analyst—a meeting where there was little disagreement, bar one small area—which I will touch on later.

From Quocirca’s point of view, technology for technology’s sake is a complete waste of money. Re-inventing the wheel through coding “new” functions where these functions are already available either within an organisation’s existing software assets, or where they could more easily be brought in through the use of off-the-shelf external code is crazy, as the organisation then has all the costs of maintenance, where an off-the-shelf function shares these costs amongst all users.

But overall, the idea that a business should make a decision, tell its IT department what that decision is and then expect it to create and manage a project to meet the business need is just not right in today’s climate. Why not? To start with, this confuses two different areas—the first is that the business is setting the strategy as it should do, but rather than the implementation of the strategy then being driven from the top down, IT tries to do what it can from the bottom up. So, historically, for example, where the board-level command has come down as “We have a problem with our customers”, IT has heard this as “Implement Siebel”, or what was a business issue around managing stock and inventory turns was heard by IT as “Buy SAP”.

Bringing the business and IT together is a theme that Quocirca has long stood on a soapbox over, and published a report about ensuring that technology was implemented purely to meet business needs a couple of years back called “Cloud computing – taking IT to task” freely available here.

So, a meeting with a company called SIG (the Software Improvement Group) proved interesting. Expecting a discussion around code inspection and the lowering of coding errors, to find that the company was a project-driven professional services company was a bit of a surprise, but as we dug beneath the surface it became apparent that SIG is a pretty useful company.

Its project teams (generally consisting of four people) work against a priority list of research topics. Sitting down with their customer, SIG teases out the main areas that are of concern and then carries out a set of in-depth technical and business analyses to identify where things are sub-optimal. Often, this could be in how the code is written or it could be in how the various functional pieces of code are working together (or not). SIG then provides a set of recommendations to the customer, based on providing a range of possibilities where the variables of risk and cost are balanced against the business’ needs. This is the basis of Quocirca’s Total Value Proposition that its analysts use with its own customers.

SIG works from what it calls a “fact-based” platform. As the project progresses, for instance using SIG’s Software Risk Monitor or Application Portfolio Analysis, measurements against expected outcomes are carried out and reported back. If there is any deviance away from the planned outcomes, this may not be a problem. The key here is that the real world has a strange way of disrupting longer-term plans. The majority of projects pick a desired outcome that could be, say, eighteen months off, and keep aiming towards that. A “good” project is one that meets that desired outcome in time and within budget.

But, what if the desired outcome should have changed, due to market conditions, the activities of competitor or a merger or acquisitions with another company? Blindly heading towards a preconceived desired outcome has shades of continuing to building aircraft carriers when the aircraft for them are no longer being bought.

What SIG does is keep reviewing the desired outcome to make sure that it is still the best outcome—and that small changes can be made during the project stages to ensure that the real end result is the right end result.

Again, if this is compared to Quocirca’s Hi-Lo road map, it is pretty much the same approach. Quocirca’s belief is that trying to predict more than a year out is not just crystal gazing—it’s more like navel gazing, even for an analyst. The best that can be done is to make a prediction across a range of possibilities for a specific time out in the future and aim for it. Let’s say that this is 3 years in the future. Then in a few months’ time, come back and review that prediction—and keep the end prediction as 3 years from now—and make changes as required along the time line to keep the long-term aim true.

This may mean changes being made to what is going on now—but these changes will be small and of a much lower cost than having to change direction by a much larger amount later on in the project.

So, SIG is a company where Quocirca feels that there is a lot in common between the two companies’ models—which makes it difficult for Quocirca to criticise the company. For organisations attempting to keep current with the pace of change in their markets and within IT, and therefore looking to a more dynamic means of dealing with projects via adopting approaches such as Agile or Scrum, bringing SIG in could ensure that the top meets the bottom in the best way.

However, as stated at the beginning of the article, there is one quibble. The company’s full name is the Software Improvement Group. Sure—it does that. But it is so much more than this—it could so easily mature into a business transformation company that helps a customer to achieve desired outcomes from a much earlier stage than when IT has already become involved.

To that end, once it has worked its way through the low hanging fruit of organisations that understand what SIG does, it may need to rebrand so that it doesn’t spend the first hour of any meeting explaining that as SIG, it is not just about software…

By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 27th July 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

For a couple of decades, Nokia has been a powerful force in the mobile telecoms industry, from the launch of the expensive, but desirable to city types and aptly named, Mobira Cityman in 1987, right until a few short years ago.

Nokia phones went from being the mobile of choice for city execs to any and all mobile workers. At one time it almost seemed like the aspirant middle manager or sales exec's car brands of choice (BMW or Mercedes) came with a mobile phone kit for a Nokia.

The phones were known as robust, reliable and predictable. Learning the menu system of one still worked fine as you moved on to its replacement. Battery life was great and getting longer while the phones themselves were getting smaller.

So what went wrong?

Like the similarly popular-with-sharp-suits BlackBerry, Nokia missed two vital trends: apps for everything and the consumerisation of business technologies.

It wasn't that Nokia phones hadn't become popular consumer devices, they had. From the late 1990s, Nokia became and remained the world's largest mobile phone maker by unit sales, until overtaken by Samsung in 2012. BlackBerry, too, went from being business only to a consumer favourite.

Yet both brands have stumbled, and many would rightly blame Apple for this. Apple not only had shiny hardware, easy to use software and an ecosystem designed to woo developers, it worked commercially at making its devices desirable, as well. The main thrust in the summer of 2007 was to go exclusively with one operator per country and get it to promote and push the new device.

Roll forward to 2012 and this would appear to be the approach that Nokia is going to use as it launches its new Lumia range, based on Microsoft's Windows Phone 8.

Since the announcement of the partnership between Microsoft and Nokia at Mobile World Congress in February 2011, there has been an expectation that these two industry giants of the PC and phone worlds would eventually come back fighting in the mobile market where both had lately struggled. It looked a bit too little too late after previous attempts and, at the time, some commented that 'two turkeys don't make an eagle'.

However it was likely that with its deep pockets something could be done by Microsoft to make an appealing mobile operating system. After many years in the wilderness, Windows Phone 7 moved it back into the frame with app developers and users, and version 8, with finally a closer tie to what's going on in the desktop and a tablet proposition, looks excellent in the beta reviews.

So that's great news for Nokia as it lines up its new phones to launch exclusively with carefully chosen carrier partners sometime close to Microsoft's expected launch of Windows Phone 8 in November?

Not quite. Although Nokia will probably have a slight lead from its strategic partnership with Microsoft, there are other manufacturers making phones based on Windows Phone 8: market leader Samsung, long-term Windows mobile partner HTC, and Huawei - which wants to make a big splash with its first smartphone. Nokia might be able to jump the gun and get its new Lumia range out first, but is exclusivity and a prime carrier's marketing push going to be enough?

The problem for the carrier doing the marketing push is in deciding what are the messages they are going to focus on.  The industry might be trying to create a noise around the coming to fruition of the efforts of three giants - Microsoft, Nokia and operator - but consumer ‘buzz' is most likely to be around what Windows Phone 8 feels like and its apps, not the handset manufacturer or even the mobile network operator.

At one time, exclusivity and rarity might have worked. It fits well as markets are moving out of geeky early-adopter into the first ramp of the hockey stick of mass market when being first or the only one with something that is seen as really cool. It also works better when economies are doing well. People have spare money and can afford to splash out to impress.

Neither of these fit the mobile market right now, at least not in the developed Western markets that Nokia is targeting. While there is still appeal and growth, it has become a mass market with different dynamics to fast growing or emerging ones. The far Eastern, cost sensitive and other fast growing markets are different, but there are other Windows Phone 8 partners who might address them more readily, in particular Huawei.

Windows Phone 8 is going to be a rollercoaster.

This article first appeared on http://www.knowyourmobile.com

By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 27th July 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

IT is now rarely business driven but, increasingly, consumer led as most individuals have access to faster, smarter and smaller technology at home than that provided by their employers. New generations of ‘digital natives’, moving from pocket money-funded to independently-earning buyers of devices, have further fuelled the growth of consumer-friendly information and communications technology.

There are also increasing numbers of older ‘silver surfers’ getting to grips with technology, especially now that many products are becoming easier to use, more accessible and sold with less jargon (well, a little less…). Arguably they can afford to spend a little more on technology and with improvements meaning it has more appeal now, they probably will.

But there is another group of technology buyers who have sophisticated technology needs and, crucially, money to spend. We might, at one time, have called some of them ‘pro-sumers’, but these are business users of the distributed, connected and outsourced age. With the consumerisation of IT and a shift to part-time, virtual company and portfolio working patterns appealing to middle-aged workers, these could be termed ‘Internet connected Professionals Actively Down Shifting’ or IPADS.

How many are they? Precise current numbers are difficult to pin down, but research conducted by insurance company Prudential in 2003 indicated over 1.4 million downshifters in the UK, and anecdotal evidence suggests this number is growing. There are also increasing numbers of self-employed, mobile and flexible working practices.

So what about their needs? 

Do they have a geeky interest in the technology? Unlikely. Do they have IT support? Rarely. Do they have mega-budgets to invest in expensive solutions? No. Do they need effective and reliable communications and information support tools? Yes.

Technology vendors have been pushing many ’-bilities’ in recent years, with scalability and flexibility often at the top. Scalability to grow incrementally as needs change is a fine thing for a soaring start-up or large enterprise, but it means little to IPADS.

Flexibility on the other hand is fine, but for most IPADS it is table stakes. They have thrown off the corporate shackles in order to give themselves ultimate flexibility (and responsibility) and expect their IT to be just as flexible. This does not mean just the technical flexibility of open or standards based technology, but also the location flexibility of being mobile and working from anywhere. A varied and portfolio style business model means most will also need complete commercial flexibility – embodied by the emergence of user purchasable cloud-based services – XaaS – anything as a service.

So the other important ‘-bilities’ are two thirds of what used to be called RAS – reliability, availability and serviceability. IPADS, like many technology users, are no longer really interested in serviceability (replacement being more often prevalent in a throw away society), but they do want everything to work, constantly and consistently, reliable and available when required.

With flexibility and XaaS as the norm, number one on the IPAD agenda for reliability is network connectivity; fixed, probably, but mobile most definitely. As they are individuals there are limits to the amount of capacity they need, but reliability of connection is vital. Even low cost consumer broadband service providers can manage to deliver pretty high up time, but mobile networks are a different matter – especially as coverage has to include home office and expected places of mobile working.

If their down shifting has included relocation, it’s likely that somewhere picturesque, but remote will have been chosen, so connectivity may be patchy.

Which begs the question. If decades ago the TV industry managed to work out a way of broadcasting rich media over old fashioned analogue to an entire nation, why does the communications industry still struggle to get its digital bits – fixed over fibre or high speed wireless - into the far corners?

Reliable coverage still matters (just ask O2 customers) and there are more and more people who will pay if it supports their lifestyle.

This article first appeared on http://www.computing.co.uk

By: Clive Longbottom, Head of Research, Quocirca Posted: 16th July 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

Thin-client computing – or, more accurately, server-based computing - has been around for years. Citrix first entered the market in 1993 with a product based on Novell’s Netware, DOS and Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager, QEMM. In 1995, it shipped its first native Windows server-based computing product, WinFrame.

The idea behind server-based computing was to provide access to a desktop held on another machine (a shared server, rather than a PC) from a different device (at the time, a specialised thin client device, but now any device from a PC or laptop through to a tablet or smartphone device). However, in the early days, server-based computing was essentially used for task workers – those doing repetitive jobs within a single application. Employee mobility was low, remote connectivity was slow and costs were high – and organisations preferred to allow the highly mobile sales person or field engineer to carry their world with them on dedicated laptops.

For task workers, providing them with specialist thin-client devices and consolidating the applications to a common place in the data centre, meant more control could be applied to what they were allowed to do, and hot-desking could be implemented as the actual desktop environment was not tied to the access device itself. Therefore, server-based computing made inroads into areas such as contact centres, claims management departments and so on – but did not fair too well outside of that environment.

Attempts to move server-based computing into different areas of the organisation hit problems. The lack of voice and video capabilities in many thin clients, the lack of support for re-directable printing and for local USB devices meant that those who required a degree more functionality than task workers did not take to the technology. 

Where server-based computing was implemented as a distributed office solution supporting remote and branch offices, wide area network performance issues meant that the response rates experienced by users was not up to expectations. Even as mobile connectivity improved, the need for an “always-on” connection mean that executives could not work when in planes, and field engineers and sales executives often found themselves incapable of gaining a solid enough – and fast enough - connection to carry out their jobs, often just at the point where that connection was most needed.

Another issue that was found by technologists - even if it remained hidden to the general user - was that moving the workload from the client to the server did not always meet the promises made by the sales person involved. Many organisations kept their PCs and used them as clients to access the desktop – but this meant that expected energy saving from moving from a 75W or more desktop to a 10W or less thin client were not realised – yet a new server farm was required to run the desktop images, which required more energy to be used. Early implementations could only sustain a few desktops per single physical server – and so large installations of server-based computing required very large server farms.

Citrix went on an acquisition spree, buying in companies such as Netscaler, Sequoia, XenSource and, more lately, Cloud.com and App-DNA that improved its capabilities. Others also entered the market, including VMware, which also made acquisitions with the likes of Thinstall. WMware launched View as a direct competitor to Citrix, built on vSphere and touting “desktops in the cloud”. Citrix and VMware continue to battle for the minds of buyers – from Quocirca’s viewpoint, the use of one or the other tends to come down from a buyer’s starting point. If the systems are going to continue to be under the management of a dedicated “desktop” team, the purchase generally comes down to Citrix. If the systems are to be managed as part and parcel of the data centre itself, then VMware tends to be more of a choice, as the server team will generally already be used to using VMware for virtualisation.

Improvements in server technology and the use of virtualisation rather than clustering meant that more desktops could be supported per server, and vendors such as Nutanix have introduced highly effective all-in-one appliances that provide the improved performance required to successfully manage virtualised desktop workload requirements at critical times, such as the period where everyone is coming into work at around the same time and access their desktops, causing a spike of activity known as a “boot storm”. Backed by improvements in connectivity and wide area network and wireless performance, server-based computing is now making greater inroads into organisations, and has moved away from just being seen as something for the task worker. Additional improvements in how the virtual desktop itself performs now means that the massive server farms of old are no longer required – a single, virtualised server rack can now serve up hundreds to thousands of desktop images – and support a hybrid delivery model as well. 

The changing ecosystem around the main vendors of thin client computing is ushering in a new era of server-based computing. No longer is the choice a binary one between everything being held on the client device against everything being held as a server-based image. Now, the intelligence of the client device can be utilised – and it doesn’t have to be a Windows- or Linux-based device to manage this.

Using client-side virtualisation, parts of a desktop can be streamed from a server to the device so that a given application runs in a secure environment where controls can still be applied. For example, the compute power of a client device can still be utilised while ensuring that data cannot be cut and pasted between the application and the local storage on the device and vice versa, maintaining high levels of security yet providing good levels of user experience when it comes to application performance and response. Where necessary, data can be stored encrypted on a device, but the use of digital rights management (DRM) from the likes of Adobe and EMC, and data leak prevention (DLP) from the likes of Symantec, Trend, McAfee and Check Point Software means that data can be stored safely, and that the employee can deal with that data in a manner unlikely to compromise the organisation.

However, the main change in the user experience is in the transparency of the desktops that can be provided. This is where the likes of Centrix Software, AppSense and RES Software come in. These companies offer easier ways to identify common application usage patterns, advise on what would make good “golden” images (desktop images that can be shared between a set of people) and implement these in the best possible way. By blending the mix of local, streamed, virtualised and server-side applications and functions, the desktop provided to the end user looks like a single, cohesive system. Backing this up through licence management and self-service application provisioning means that the employee is put more in control of their own environment while they get the best possible performance from their systems. Fully managed server-based computing also means that a bring your own device (BYOD) strategy is not just possible but is something to be encouraged – the device becomes just an access mechanism, with everything that the individual does on that device around the organisation’s needs are controlled completely from the centre.

So, server-based computing has come of age. The technology is now extremely advanced, and what buyers should be looking for is where the real business value-add lies –areas such as being able to patch and update images en masse, areas such as full licence management to ensure that over- or under-licencing is not occurring. The capability for Apple iOS, Android and other non-Windows systems to be able to participate as fully as possible in a hybrid server-based environment should also be looked for, as this enables BYOD.

Finally, don’t fall for the argument that server-based computing is all about cost. The complex transfer of energy from end devices to the data centre, combined with the additional need for systems management and maintenance of the systems in the data centre can lead to additional costs. Strangely, it may be more cost effective in the short to medium term to maintain your existing PCs as clients, using whatever operating system there (e.g. Windows NT) as a client. The devices can then be cascade replaced as they fail with low-energy thin clients, so getting more value out of the PCs – although organisations must look to be able to identify where the sweet spot is where managing and maintaining such PCs outweighs the cost of replacement, even before device failure. What server-based computing should be about is the capability to better manage and secure the organisation’s intellectual property in a manner which enables the end user to still work flexibility. And, if this happens, then the end result will be a more cost effective system.

By: Clive Longbottom, Head of Research, Quocirca Posted: 13th July 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

Cloud computing promises much when it comes to the capability to move workloads between dedicated private and shared public infrastructure so the that the use of resources can grow and shrink as needed. As mentioned in the last post from Quocirca, the strong growth in the adoption of private cloud is good for public cloud providers, providing there is the capability to port workloads between the two.

The promise is good but, in many cases, the implementation has left much to be desired. The main problem is that there are a multitude of cloud platforms that have been built either on existing underpinnings of old-style operating systems and application server stacks (and, as such, struggle to scale and share resources), or that they have been built in a proprietary manner (and, as such, can only share workloads or resources between themselves, and not with different systems).

All that is required are some standards to enable a reasonable level of commonality at the compute, storage and network layers, and everything will be OK. And on the face of it, there should be few problems when it comes to such standards. Like the proverbial bus, stand around for long enough and a whole load of standards will come along at the same time.

It is all well and good for the various industry bodies – such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC), the Storage Network Industry Alliance (SNIA), the Desktop Management Task Force (DMTF), the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and the several tens of others all working assiduously in this space – to create de jure standards, but unless they reflect the real needs of users in the market and do so quickly, the cloud world will already have gone proprietary.

And here lies the biggest problem – your standard may not be my standard, and we’ll need a third standard to act as the bridge between what I am using and what you are using. The problem with de jure standards is that they can take ages to agree – and less time for the vendors nominally supporting them to break through adding additional “extensions” here and there.

However, cloud has been around for a while now, and there are some identifiable winning bets out there. The 500 pound gorilla has to be Amazon Web Services (AWS) with its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and its Simple Storage Services (S3). However, for a number of reasons, AWS is not suitable for many organisations looking to move to a cloud environment, whether this is down to cost, contracts or specific geographic needs. What is important is not to shut any doors on integration between existing internal and external applications and services and a chosen public cloud platform. At the storage level, S3 seems to be the direction the crowd is moving in; at the compute level, EC2 is not quite such a certain bet due to the extra complexities there are in dealing with compute workloads as against storage workloads – and that different cloud platform providers seem to want to compete over this area more.

This is where the use of application programming interfaces (APIs) comes in. By utilising the same APIs, cloud providers can make it easier for workloads to be ported across different platforms. Lunacloud uses the Cloudian storage system, which, along with other cloud platforms such as Eucalyptus and the open source OpenStack (backed by Rackspace), supports the S3 APIs.

What is still needed is agreement over compute APIs. Some platforms already support the EC2 API, but only at a basic level, and this does not mean that compute workloads are portable across different cloud platforms. Only time will tell if the world has to wait for an agreed de jure standard, or some company railroads through their own means of doing this. Cloud can only provide fully on its promise when compute portability is fully in place to enable organisations to choose where a specific workload should run – on its private cloud, or in a public cloud environment.

It may well be that the answer to this is not to force through a base-level standard at the platform level, but to essentially create a cloud enterprise service bus (ESB), where different connectors can be created that connect different cloud compute services together enabling workloads to be ported, on the fly, between platforms.

The world cannot wait for the de jure groups to create coherent and cohesive holistic cloud standards – this is like trying to boil the ocean as the world changes around you. Basic de facto APIs are already available at the storage level; the network angle is pretty much there from just using existing network standards and approaches. The key is still in the compute compatibility: whether AWS EC2 will follow S3 to become the de facto standard, or whether a cloud ESB or an alternative approach becomes the winner is, as yet, unclear.

Organisations wanting to gain the early adopter benefits of cloud now need to know that they are not adopting something that will either push them down a cul-de-sac or involve them in constant change as they chase some level of working interoperability. Quocirca recommends that organisations choose carefully – any provider should be able to discuss their future plans around interoperability openly. Just beware those that sound closed to the idea of being able to move workloads between platforms.

By: Clive Longbottom, Head of Research, Quocirca Posted: 12th July 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

There seems to have been a rash of articles, discussions and commentaries around the need for organisations to adapt themselves to the needs of the new generation of workers coming in to the workplace. These 20-somethings, also known as “Gen Y” are generally profiled as being at the forefront of social media usage, have moved away from e-mail and are part of the commoditisation of IT. Therefore, the commentators say that to attract the Gen Ys, organisations have to change the way that they work wholesale to provide an environment that the Gen Y will find attractive – otherwise they will just throw their arms in the air and slope off to some better employer.

But hang on. The first thing to remember is that the Gen Y brigade is not the first to go through a major change. I entered the employment market in 1981 – the year that the PC first came to the market. I was pretty tech savvy and literate, and did try to make sure that I got a job in an environment which was forward looking. My mother, who was in the vanguard of those able to use a manual adding machine at extreme speed was preceded by those who understood how to use a telephone, and those before them who knew how to use an abacus.

Did this force organisations to change how they worked to fit in with the workforce? Hardly. The technology was brought in because it was good for the business, and those who were good at the use of the technology did well in the market place. Those who weren’t, struggled.

But, the real issue here is this idea that possible employees will just walk elsewhere if an employer does not provide everything that they believe is their due. According to February 2012 figures, 21% of all graduates who had left university the year before in the UK were still unemployed by the end of the year, as were 26% of 16 year olds who left school with GCSEs. This gives an unemployed workforce of around 1 million.

If you look at other countries, it can be even worse – in Spain and Greece, over 50% of under 24s are unemployed.

With existing workforces of the late-stage baby boomers and Gen X workers, trying to move them over to a social media-centric, non-email way of work is not easy. If it is done just to make sure that some surly 21 year old who believes that it is their God-given right to be able to use Facebook at work feels at home, then I think the majority of organisations would find themselves facing a mass exodus of their existing – experienced – workforce. They will also still have problems with the Gen Y incomers who would, with little understanding of the commercial world, be security nightmares and add little in real value to the business.

However, please don’t take me to be Ned Ludd wrecking machines or a 16th century Dutchman throwing his clogs into the weaving looms. I am all for progress – but progress for the right reasons. Progress for progress’ sake is a road to ruin – but the use of new technologies because they are good for the organisation is what everyone should be aiming for.

Therefore, before any organisation decides that social networking is for them, it has to be asked “for what reason”? If social networking enables an organisation to reach out to its target constituents, and that this can be done in an integrated manner with existing approaches, then go for it. However, there may well be many within that target group who are not happy with social media, and would prefer to carry on being dealt with via the web, email or the telephone. This is the biggest problem with technology – very little that comes through as being “new” ever replaces any of the “old” that has gone before it. A social media specialist who refuses to accept that email and integrated websites are still very important is of negative use to an organisation – they will just go off and create new siloes of information.

However, organisations that insist on staying with the old because they do not understand the new will find the competition that do understand social media and how bring your own device (BYOD) can be successfully embraced will start to pass them by.

The Gen Ys coming through are essentially no different to any other group that has gone before them. When we entered the employment market, we all felt that we could change the world, that our bosses were completely past it and didn’t understand the new world being ushered in by whatever the technology de jour was.

Those technologies that were good for business succeeded, those that were just a spike on the technology continuum faded and died. Those employees who understood what was good and what was bad, and were capable of flexing their skills to embrace what had gone before and also what came along were the gold nuggets that ended up being head-hunted to very successful positions.

So – don’t fall for the Siren cry that everything must change in order to attract the Gen Y. Look at what technology is coming through, find someone who understands it enough to explain what the promises and problems are from a business viewpoint, and then implement what will help the business in an integrated and inclusive manner.

This will make your organisation successful. And, for some strange reason, success tends to attract talent – those Gen Ys that are worth it will search you out.

By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 6th July 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

An interesting shift in the world of IT is the changed perception of operating systems. At one time even passing knowledge of them was the geeky preserve of a select few. Then open systems transformed them into radical hippy tools to overthrow the establishment, hence the famous “UNIX – live free or die” motto. Then came Linux.

But it is mobile devices that truly show just how much attitudes towards operating systems in general have changed over the past 15 years. No longer dreaded, the release of a new operating system is now eagerly anticipated, indicating the shift of IT from beige techie tool to consumer shiny bauble.

This is particularly apparent for Apple users. While not everyone subscribes to the slavish ‘fanboi’ mentality, most know that new releases of Apple’s operating system will mean either new hardware has just arrived or is arriving soon or some cozy, established ‘status quo’ is about to be given a severe shake up – often it is a combination of all three.

So what does the next major release of Apple’s iOS, version 6, due out in the autumn of 2012, have in store? While the only new hardware launched alongside the announcement of iOS6 was modest incremental improvements in the specifications of the range of laptops, some of the software features might indicate future hardware directions.

Firstly there were improvements in communications that affect email, phone calling and social networking. The VIP option added into email and different options for responding silently with messages to incoming phone calls will add fine tuning controls that will make it easier to fit these forms of communication alongside other primary tasks that are demanding more of the user’s attention.

The additional ways to simplify the sharing of photos and integration with Facebook might permit these social elements to be incorporated more easily into other primary activities too.

The extension of FaceTime to allow voice calls over any network and on any device – currently only tablet or phone – might also provide clues to the future activity Apple is nudging toward with this growth in video functionality, but more of that later.

The shaking up of existing arrangements takes two forms.

The one that has attracted most attention is Apple pulling Google from the mapping function and replacing it with its own service. There is no doubt that Google’s investments with online mapping in general and Google Earth and Street View in particular have changed the way locations are sought and investigated.

Going beyond traditional mapping and navigation systems, they overlay far more data and location intelligence from the real to the digital world.

Apple appears to be taking a further gamble by ‘seeing’ Google’s mapping and ‘raising’ the stakes with 3D photo-realistic information. If it can apply its characteristic ease of use to manipulating and navigating the information then users will get their dreams of The Matrix or Superman-like city flybys fulfilled.

The information is expensive to gather and maintain, but Apple’s deep pockets seem to be able to afford the fleets of aircraft and high definition cameras required to obtain it. They can probably easily afford to cover the costs, legal and otherwise, of ensuring privacy demands are met too.

The gamble will be how to monitise the information, but while Apple rarely offers anything for free, it might take the view that its stunning terrain will allow it to collect revenues indirectly elsewhere.

A second shift, perhaps more intriguing, but understated and potentially quite radical comes from the Passbook application. This seems to be tackling the mobile wallet opportunity in an entirely different direction to other organisations – essentially looking at everything else people put in a wallet or purse, but not the payment instruments (cards and cash).

There is a lot of sense in this, in that the combination of agendas and egos in mobile digital payments – operators, handset companies and banks or card issuers – means that while the payment technology is relatively straightforward, the commercial arrangements are fraught with complexity.

Apple is instead pursuing the bits of clutter – tickets, coupons and loyalty cards – that people need or want to carry, but occasionally either lose, misplace or just fail to pick up. These are often involving transactions of low value compared to payments, but will be considered of relatively higher importance and convenience to the individual. Success will depend on getting sufficient numbers of third parties involved, but many will see this as a great opportunity to be carried in so many pockets basking in the halo of the Apple brand.

There are controls, safeguards and regulations to be considered, but an order of magnitude less difficult than digital payments and with greater likelihood of user acceptance. Passbook might be a ‘killer app’.

So what’s the possible new hardware waiting in the wings?

It could be the long awaited TV, not simply a large touch screen with the current broadcast experience given the Apple once over, but an interface that provides the integration of consumable video content into a social communications hub for the home. That would be an interesting destination for the operating system experience. 

This article first appeared on http://www.knowyourmobile.com

By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 7th June 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

One of the world's leading software companies (Google) deciding to become a hardware manufacturer is an extremely significant event. It could also be extremely disruptive, potentially creating lots of problems for Google's existing partner, despite the search giant's claims to the contrary. 

For this reason it's easy to see why the Google/Motorola merger has come under serious scrutiny from trade authorities the globe over. Announced almost a year ago, it has taken Google thousands hours to get the deal finalised. China finally signed off on the deal last week confirming the buyout – but there were ‘conditions.’

Keeping Android open source for five years
To get support from the Chinese authorities Google has had to commit to keeping Android open for 5 years, which reinforces the perception that these will continue to be ‘interesting times’ for the software platform. Does Google plan to eventually make Android closed source?

The history of mobile software and hardware platform relationships has always been challenging. The software companies offering mobile operating systems have generally struggled to get traction and then momentum with hardware OEMs.

Microsoft’s mobile problem
Despite its overall industry clout Microsoft has always struggled to get mobile momentum, but is hoping things might be different with a hardware legend like Nokia.

The Finnish company’s software past is not so legendary as its hardware. Symbian, which Nokia was first a major investor and then took total control of in 2008, started with the strong mobile handheld computer heritage of Psion, spiced it with the involvement of major telecoms handset players, but still failed to become dominant, especially outside of Europe. 

The death of Palm
The demise of the other major mobile handheld platform Palm, partly due to its own failings, and partly the ineptitude of its acquirer, HP, is another example of how once apparently unassailable market leaders can falter.

Palm had both hardware and software under its control, a strong application ecosystem and even an online ‘app’ store, but failed among the powerbases of operators as IT converged with telecoms.

Apple redefining the market
This is where Apple succeeded. Despite (or because of) the consumer appeal of the iPod, the narrowest of handset ranges and a closed platform, its relationship with mobile operators started on a different footing.

The industry dynamics and commercial models have been changed forever – mobile networks have become open like the internet, operator control and walled gardens have become overrun, and ‘over the top’ services are no longer preventable. 

This should be the perfect environment for open mobile platforms to thrive, and Google’s Android acquisition in 2005 (Oracle lawyers notwithstanding) was astute and well timed.

There are other open mobile platforms, especially in the mobile Linux camp, where Palm momentarily dallied, and some have enjoyed considerable growth in numbers, particularly in China and Asia, but have thus far struggled to get much attention in the noisy US and Western European mobile markets. 

Unstoppable Android
Growth figures don’t lie: Android is massive, covering a wide range of handsets from a varied group of manufacturers, including Samsung, HTC, LG, Huawei and Sony. Scale-wise, Google’s way of doing things seems to beat Apple’s – Android is the world’s number one mobile software.

The problem is, as many software platform companies have found, that hardware OEMs have their own agendas and all move at different paces. The software platform company is not in control, but is the ‘face’ of the device and will most likely be blamed by users first for any problems they encounter. Phone operators used to be the first port of call but now users emphasise the ‘smart’ more than the ‘phone’.

So does ownership of a hardware company fix the problem? Perhaps, but it brings others, and this might give a clue as to why the Chinese authorities insisted on keeping the platform open for five years. 

Tizen – the next Android
Right now, even with assurances from Google, almost every Android OEM will have nagging doubts that Motorola hardware teams will have an edge from access and proximity to Android software engineers. Google will no doubt try very hard to be transparent and avoid this issue, but short of not making smartphone hardware, it will prove difficult to completely quash these concerns. 

So why five years? Well that should give enough time for brands to establish, and perhaps build sufficient profile to break away from Android.

Google’s biggest hardware partner Samsung is already linked with a new open-source platform that it’s co-developing with Intel and The Linux Foundation. HTC is also linked to the Tizen project, albeit in an unofficial capacity, making one think Tizen could be the answer for many of Google’s disaffected partners.

In the meantime Google might also shift its attention to other directions, especially given all the speculation about Apple going further into the TV market than its current small black box.

There is a lesser-known part of Motorola that Google now has access to, which builds broadband modems, home gateways, set top boxes and TV technology. This was what Motorola called the ‘Home’ division. The hardware in this corner could be exploited without upsetting smartphone OEMs and would give Google some CPE (customer premises equipment) foothold to complement its default appearance in the browser and on many phones.

While many thought this marriage was about patent wars and mobile, it might be a little more radical – interesting times indeed! 

This article first appeared on http://www.knowyourmobile.com

By: Gerry Brown, Analyst - Digital Marketing & CRM, Bloor Research (Moved) Posted: 31st May 2012 Copyright Bloor Research © 2012

In May 2012 both Adobe and IBM held Digital Marketing Summits. Adobe's Digital Marketing Summit was held in Battersea in London, and IBM's Marketing Innovation Summit was held in Madrid. Both events attracted over 1,700 attendees. Both companies stressed the importance of providing a complete product solution for marketers and promised to acquire more companies, integrate all the product pieces, and further simplify and improve user interfaces. So far so good.

Both had 'futurists' presenting and endeavoured to paint a vision for the future of digital marketing. Surprisingly both did not really embrace social media during their summits - there were no real-time polls or broadcast twitter commenting. Personalisation was on a physical person-to-person level rather than using digital technology. Both had great evening parties with lots of free drinks and food and entertainment.  

Here the similarities end. These two companies are deadly enemies when it comes to fighting for digital marketing market share, although they see the world from completely different viewpoints. IBM is a $107Bn turnover 'gorilla' with 400,000 employees and seeks to "deliver value to enterprise clients through integrated business and IT innovation" i.e. it provides every kind of software and service for every user department in virtually every industry in every geographic region. IBM has neglected the Marketing Department in the past, and is now looking to put that right.

Adobe is a $4Bn 'cheeky monkey' with 9,000 employees with a specialist creative and document management heritage. Adobe's goal is "to produce the world's content and maximize the impact of that content". Adobe has recently consolidated its business into three Strategic Business Units: Digital Marketing, Print & Publish, and Digital Media. Traditionally Adobe has served the publishing industry, and now it is extending this remit with a greater specific focus on Marketing.

Adobe is a young company which is only 30 years old. It thinks young and acts young and playful. Its SVP & GM for Digital Marketing, Brad Rencher, was born in the year that IBM's Chairman Sam Palmisano starting working for IBM (1974). The youthful new age bands playing at Summit included Diversity, the dance group of X Factor fame. My 13 year-old niece would have been in heaven. Adobe attracts the creative young things working in advertising agencies and marketing departments who use their software and who like to be "cool", creative and funky.

IBM's message is more business-like and adult, for a more risk-averse older crowd - especially the IT Department whose job it will be to implement its products. IBM's key message is: it works and it's integrated, modular, scalable and complete. This "left-brained" thinking suits those of us who are more logical, analytical and objective, whilst Adobe's "right-brained" thinking suits those who are more intuitive, thoughtful and subjective. You won't find an IBMer (as Adobe did) inviting VIPs back stage with a "to show them the love" message!

In terms of their relative marketplace positions, IBM acquired Unica (for marketing automation), Coremetrics (for web site analytics), DemandTec (for retail marketing mix optimisation), and has announced the acquisition of tealeaf (for web site experience analysis). IBM's focus is clearly on the automation of the marketing function within the bigger picture of 'Smarter Commerce'. Marketing is one quartile of their Buy-Market-Sell-Service Smarter Commerce concept.

Adobe acquired Omniture (for web site analytics), Day (for web content management), Efficient Frontier (for PPC optimisation), and Demdex (for online audience segmentation and targeting). Adobe's focus is more towards the burgeoning online advertising industry rather than marketing automation.

Adobe's Digital Marketing Suite turnover is $580m per annum, of which $480 is sourced from the ex-Omniture business. Site Catalyst represents 50% of ex-Omniture revenues. A key challenge for Adobe is to increase their product penetration within their existing customer base which is reported to be c. 1.5 products per customer. Adobe sees its main route to market as its partner channel, especially by deepening their relationships with the advertising agencies such as WPP and Publicis who have strong relationships with CMOs and other marketing folk, but any channel will do!

Adobe has the larger market share but IBM is catching up fast with a higher growth rate (the WebSphere family, which includes Unica and Coremetrics, grew at 40% in 2011) and a commitment to spend another $20Bn in acquisitions by 2015. Moreover, IBM is throwing its considerable muscle behind its digital marketing initiative including educating and re-skilling its global sales force and enterprise account teams. In addition, it can call on the considerable skills and presence of its PWC acquisition (Global Business Services) to provide a strategic consulting front-end approach to sales account development.

In some ways you could say that if Adobe and IBM meet each other in competition, one of them is in the wrong place. However, this is a battle of competing approaches and market doctrines rather than an "either-or" choice. After all, both companies have publically stated their goal of "market leadership in the digital marketing space".

In summary, expect both companies to spend freely on their own marketing to establish a leadership position. More acquisitions will follow from both camps. The scales must be tipped slightly in favour of IBM given the massive resources at their disposal. However the creative mavericks that inhabit marketing departments never like to be predictable, and may just favour the underdog's quirkiness and dedication to the marketing cause.

By: Matthew Wailling, Director, Cordless Consultants Posted: 21st May 2012 Copyright Cordless Consultants © 2012

Technology in the workplace is increasingly prevalent.  Collectively and individually, we use a myriad of devices and technology solutions to live our daily lives and complete our work.  The days of 9-5 working are long gone and, with the lines between social and work life blurred, companies and IT directors are forever reviewing their methodologies and adapting to the workforce, so they can meet their corporate objectives.

Sophisticated mobile devices, cloud computing and increased emphasis on workspace efficiency and greater collaboration are just a few of the developments of the past few years to broaden the scope of an IT department’s remit.  So with the three major technology events of this year over, what’s in store for 2012 and beyond, and what should you have on your radar or wish-list?

1 NFC

It’s a long time since we used our mobile phones just for talking but this year the change will be radical: in 2012 phones will become both keys and wallets. NFC (Near Field Communication) chips were fitted to a number of mobile handsets in 2011, and 2012 will see far more widespread take-up.

New NFC handsets allow users to swipe a mobile phone in much the same way they would swipe a bank card or building access ID card. Business travellers will soon be swiping their phones to pay for hotel rooms, and then use that same phone to unlock the door to their hotel room.

2 BYOD / virtual desktop

Technology is increasingly used in recruitment, retention and staff engagement, and as personal IT use becomes more sophisticated, it’s increasingly difficult to satisfy ever more demanding staff. Do your people want an Ultrabook, an iPad, an ibook or a mix of the three? Matching staff desire with must-have business technology and access has been something of a challenge.

The good news is that with the latest version of Citrix, a full Windows 7 desktop experience can be delivered securely to any web-enabled device, whether it’s company issue or personally purchased.

Thanks to the new Motorola Razr, that device can even be a mobile phone. The Razr is powered by a quad core processor, and when you arrive in the office you simply slide it into its docking station – which is hooked up to a full-sized HD screen, full-sized mouse and full-sized keyboard - to provide a full desktop experience. You can now ask staff to ‘ Bring Your Own Device’, make more efficient use of workspace, and at the same time IT managers can be safe in the knowledge that company data is secure.

3 Gesture Control

Where the Nintendo Wii started, the Xbox Kinect is taking over. No, not just in the relaxation rooms of creative agencies across London; an increasing volume of manufacturers and developers are now using the Kinect to harness gesture control for business use.

While personal devices such as PCs are likely to remain mouse or touch-screen operated in the immediate future, you can expect to see shop window point of sale displays and large format displays (such as control room media walls) that can be controlled by the swish of an arm.

4 Bespoke telepresence

Telepresence is at risk of becoming a hackneyed – and misapplied - term used to describe any high definition video conference screen. A true telepresence solution is an immersive space where each party sits in an identical environment. Historically this meant premium space was devoted to off-the-shelf products and a room that was absolutely perfect for telepresence calls, but not much use for anything else.

But of course different companies have varying needs, and the importance of workspace efficiency and flexibility has thankfully seen the introduction of bespoke suites, designed to the specific needs of individual businesses. These offer a truly immersive video experience, but can be easily reconfigured for other uses when remote video calls are not required.

5 Transparent LCD display

A quick trawl back through your own TV set ownership history will reveal that we’ve all been buying bigger and bigger TVs as quickly as they get thinner and less obtrusive. Big experience, less space lost from the room. Great. But the fact remains that when you switch that TV off, you’ve got a big black box on the wall.

2012 sees the introduction of the transparent LCD screen: a high quality, large format digital display that is completely transparent when it’s not in use. Initially these will be seen in point of sale areas, such as interactive displays in jewellers and to advertise products on the front of vending machines. But the logical evolution is for these screens to form part of exciting window displays and even sit within glass partition meeting room walls.

6 Windows 8

Out with the start button and in with the tiled home screen. Although the proposed new operating interface from Microsoft may not be seen as anything radical by die-hard Apple users, it stands to revolutionise the way in which many people use with their PCs and especially their tablets.

Focusing much more on the use of haptic displays (that’s touch technology) as opposed to a mouse, the new Windows platform, expected in the 2nd half of 2012, is sure to provide a real challenge for the iPad and Android tablets. With over a million versions of the preview release of Windows 8 downloaded on the day it became available, interest in this new platform is surely only going to increase.

7 Facial recognition display

Digital signage has been shown to increase sales by keeping content fresh and targeted. With facial recognition display, targeting is going to become genuinely bespoke as the viewer’s face is identified, and all sorts of stored data accessed and used. The application could be as simple as identifying that a particular person has viewed the screen before, and therefore certain stages or displays could be skipped, or it might be as detailed as remembering the sex, age, emotion and possibly even identity of the person from a previous visit.

So on the one hand, in the coming months your visitor badge could be printed for you by the time you reach the reception desk and you’ll be greeted with a more convincing personal touch by the person manning the desk, but on the other, a digital display in your usual supermarket could spot you approaching and flash up an offer for the washing powder you always buy. So just be mindful of what you keep buying…

8 Augmented reality

Augmented reality (AR) provides a simple link between the digital world and the real world. It is a live view of a physical environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.

So, when viewing the real world through the camera of your digital device (such as a phone or tablet), AR will overlay digital images on top of what the camera sees to give you further information. The possibilities here are enormous. For example, an architect could hold a tablet over a printed CAD plan of a building floor plate and the AR program will show a 3D render of the space, which could then be viewed and interacted with by clients and the rest of the design team.

9 Intelligent buildings

Intelligent buildings are not a new concept, but the scale of that intelligence and the way it can be applied is growing fast. It’s not a single technology, but the convergence of multiple systems onto the IP network. Building intelligence is now reaching a granular level.

As an example, through early planning at the design stage, an intelligent BMS system can interface with room booking software, which in turn integrates with AV control software. So when a meeting room is not in use, the lighting and other services remain in a standby state, with associated energy savings. When a pre-booked user checks in, the room wakes from hibernation and the AV springs into life in accordance with predefined requirements. These same spaces will shut down again when a meeting ends and users check out. In the near future perhaps even the plants will get in on the act – send you a quick email you when they need watering.

10 Wireless power

Any forward-thinking workplace is now kitted out with wireless internet and PC peripherals, but in even the most flexible of spaces we find ourselves plugging in a cable to recharge our devices.

For true and lasting mobility and flexibility we need wireless power. Although we are unlikely to see it in the workplace in 2012, wireless power is developing fast. The fastest progress comes from the Wireless Power Consortium, its dozens of members including Nokia, HTC, Samsung, Motorola and Philips.  The Consortium has agreed on a common standard - known as Qi, and pronounced ‘chee’ – which uses magnetic induction.

So it won’t be long before any surface displaying the Qi logo will wirelessly charge your Qi battery-powered device, giving true and lasting mobility.

Once again the world of sci-fi is being brought to reality (the gesture control exhibited by Tom Cruise and his team in Minority Report has been a favourite hope of mine for the past ten years), and there are some clear-cut business benefits to be had both in working productivity and flexibility and in enhancing the customer experience. Spend your money wisely…