Posted by Tony Law in Impact of IT, IT is business, ITasITis, Social issues, Social media, Technorati.
Facebook made the mainstream news again last night. Behind the news there’s an interesting twist.
In brief: Facebook is being forced (as the commentators put it) to face up to issues of inappropriate and inflammatory comment being posted on its open platform. In the early days of the internet (think Newsgroups) or of the Web, anyone could put anything up. Communities like newsgroups or conferencing sites were largely self policing. Now, with the development of case law and some explicit regulation, it’s not such a free-for-all.
Facebook mirrors this. In many ways, for some people, Facebook is the Web. Its un-policed, self-regulated, relatively small caterpillar has become a free-flying butterfly (is that a good metaphor?) where it has millions of users, representing a wide variety of (mostly legitimate) points of view, different cultures and so on. It’s taken a while for the management of a multi-billion public company to realise they have to exercise responsibility.
OK, so far, so obvious. But the interesting thing to me about last night’s news item was that the pressure has come, specifically, from advertisers. In the Web world we’re used to thinking of advertisers as a necessary intrusion; they pay for our Google searches, our online news (paywalls apart), most of our “free” services. But here, it’s the advertisers that have forced Facebook to take notice. No, said the Nationwide Building Society (and others), we will not take the risk of our brand appearing alongside this kind of stuff.
As the BBC report says, the Nationwide action went public on Twitter. Looking at the Twitter feed for @asknationwide, on 25th May, it appears they received a large number of tweets relating to ads being displayed alongside offensive content. One tweet to @everydaysexism says “It is not our intention for our ads to appear on pages like this. We will report this page to Facebook and suspend our ads”, and they did just that.
Whoever thought that damage to brands could become a force for positive change?
Links:
• Sexism campaign: Facebook learns a lesson, Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC Technology, 29 May 2013
• Facebook bows to campaign groups over ‘hate speech’, BBC (Dave Lee and Rory Cellan-Jones), 29 May 2013
• BBC news video, 29 May 2013
• Twitter: @askNationwide and @everydaysexism (look here for other news links)
Posted by Tony Law in Impact of IT, IT is business, ITasITis, Social issues, Technorati.
People are beginning to talk about “keeping business running in London during the Olympics” or words to that effect. I’ll try and track some of the most helpful commentary.
The Olympic planners themselves highlight the key issues. Of course the effect will be at its greatest close to the venues, but these are quite widely scattered across London and beyond. Nor is the impact limited to those areas:
- travel: there will be perhaps millions of additional people in, and travelling to and around, London. Event start times may mean additional travellers in the rush hours. Transport networks will be re-organised to service the games, meaning disruption to normal travel patterns
- logistics: deliveries into or from, or transport through, London will see challenges
- communications: there will be significant additional load on communications networks which might lead to overload and failures in other areas
- accommodation: will be scarce and probably more expensive than usual
- staff: people may be on leave (escaping, or, because they want to attend events or are volunteering), or, on shorter timescales, giving attention to reports of high profile events as they happen
- and don’t forget that however good the preparation there is always the possibility of a high profile security incident which would cause disruption very widely
Suggestions, and commentary, are beginning to emerge. What’s striking me is that we’ve been here before: not in relation to the Olympics, clearly, but with other situations where travel and normal business patterns might be disrupted. Ash clouds. Bird flu. And so on.
So, what are the recommendations being re-invented? For the people issues, some clear short-term ones such as don’t arrange meetings during the Olympics which involve lots of people travelling to, and needing accommodation in, the London area. See if working patterns can be changed to stagger travel. And do check out the events at the out-of-London venues too. Expect that, for those who do need to visit, accommodation expenses will increase. Book travel as far ahead as possible.
But (this is an IT blog) once again the discussion focusses on alternatives. Use online technology to support distributed meetings: much more a way of business-as-usual than it was, for example, ten years ago at “9/11″. In fact, where I worked, it was 9/11 that kick-started the use of distributed meetings: not just from the security angle, but because the number of people out of place that single week highlighted just how much the company was spending on travel.
Encourage and support staff working from home, to circumvent commuting disruption: we had that one with the bird flu scare, and one of the key questions was whether the company’s inbound connectivity was adequate. Another, not immediately obvious, is whether the public infrastructure (which in residential areas won’t have been upgraded to support the event) is up to the increased load being placed on it. We’re a lot further on than even a couple of years ago in understanding different ways of enabling business activities to use personal technology, but staff likely to work from home may still need to be provided with additional services or facilities too.
Here are a number of references and events.
First, check out the Olympic organisers’ own business continuity information, planners and tools. London 2012 online has an extensive Business Network section highlighting both opportunities for businesses to get involved and the continuity challenges. Track through to Preparing your Business, or download (PDF) Preparing your Business for the Games.
The CMA (part of the BCS these days) is hosting an eventon the afternoon of 16th April focussing on the comms issues: Managing Your Business During the Olympics will include fixed line, mobile network and data centre providers and an ISP.
I’ll seek more, but the major (global) analysts not surprisingly don’t have much. In the meantime I’m off cycling in France along the Avenue Verte Dieppe-Forges (posting in French – sorry!), so I’ll extend this post next week.
Posted by Tony Law in Cloud, Consumerization, Impact of IT, Insight services, IT is business, IT marketplace, ITasITis, Managing IT, Social issues, Social media, Tech Watch, Technorati.
It’s the time when insight services are awash with predictions for the coming year. I’ve been having a look or, where possible, a listen to a few.
Did you see a recent Forrester announcement? In line with their own recommendations, they’ve replaced the CIO post with a Chief Business Technology Officer. With hindsight I’m surprised it’s taken this long; “Not IT but BT” has been a Forrester theme for several years now.
Another place where I’ve seen the Business Technology tag used is in McKinsey‘s quarterly newsletter. Their Business Technology office has just reported their sixth annual technology survey. According to the newsletter, “executives say their companies are boosting IT spending and adopting new technology platforms to support innovation”. McKinsey see a significant challenge to IT: “Aspirations—and current expectations—for IT have never been higher”.
Here are a few other pointers.
IDC Insights believe the CIO’s 2012 agenda will be shaped around the “Four Forces” (Cloud, Mobile, Social, and Big Data). I’m registered on their webcast (10th Jan: free) to hear more. Yankee Group also offer a focus on mobility. Their focus is on the market for devices, but their research speaks also to the corporate buyer strategist when they see an even smartphone market between Android, iPhone and BlackBerry. Oddly, though, they refer to the Bring-Your-Own market but don’t have a focus on tablets. They do, though, see both personal Cloud services and HTML5 becoming important in the coming year.
Gartner, of course, have created their swathe of Predicts 2012 content. Of course, most of it is client-only access. But the front page of Predicts 2012 includes a 15-minute podcast from Darryl Plummer. He highlights the same four areas as IDC (except he says “Information” instead of “Big Data”). It’s worth listening to Darryl; he’s quite listenable-to.
Significantly, Gartner’s highlighted report for the IT community is titled “Gartner’s Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users, 2012 and Beyond: Control Slips Away“. You almost don’t need to read the report; but there’s a useful summary by Peter Galen at Infosec Update. Corporate control of users’ IT assets has been useful, but is now increasingly a myth. Seems like Gartner are saying that this year is the year it will reach tipping point. But, listening to Darryl speaking in this area, I did rather wonder “What took you so long?”
IBM, in their “5 in 5″ (five trends in five years) take the argument a step further and look beyond the WENA (western Europe/North America) corporate market. Thanks to Basex for the alert to this, but I’m not entirely clear that Basex is looking at the same report. Their focus on mobile devices is on the super-smart, not on the abolition of the digital divide. Worth a look, to lift your eyes beyond the immediate page.
Finally, Ray Wang (now at his own Constellation Research) highlights “10 Mega Business Trends To Watch For In 2012″.
.
Perhaps the key one, for IT, is “Keep consumerisation of IT enterprise class”: in other words, ensure the right balance between enablement and discipline. Here’s a world class statement of the issue: If IT is too strict, business fails. If business fails to have a level of discipline in technology adoption, IT can not keep up with the lack of standards and scale. Ray sets this in the context (and there’s a timechart) of the change from transaction to engagement as the basis for business. There are comments for innovators, and for those who are scared to innovate.
Happy New Year!
Links:
• Forrester Research Names First Chief Business Technology Officer, Forrester Press Release, 5 Oct 2011
• A rising role for IT: McKinsey Global Survey results, McKinsey Quarterly, Dec 2011
• IDC Insights 2012 Predictions: The CIO Agenda, IDC Insights, 4 Jan 2012, in IT Governance and Executive Strategies. For the webcast (10 Jan), the registration link is at the foot of the page.
• Register and download 2012 Mobility Predictions: A Year of Living Dangerously, Yankee Group , Dec 2011
• Predicts 2012: Gartner; summary at Infosec Island, Peter Galen, 3 Jan 2012
• IBM the next 5 in 5, see also Basex Tech Watch
• 10 Mega Business Trends To Watch For In 2012, Ray Wang, constellation
Posted by Tony Law in Impact of IT, IT is business, ITasITis, Managing IT, Tech Watch, Technorati.
Tags: PCI DSS
I’m facilitating a workshop next week on PCI DSS and as usual here are some of the links I’ve identified, including some recent enforcement casework.
For the uninitiated: PCI is the Payment Card Industry and DSS is its Data Security Standard. PCI is an international body, and the standards are effectively set by the “acquirers” – that’s PCI-speak for those bodies such as card issuers and banks who “acquire” the transactions and transfer money.
National information security requirements are very much to the fore too. In the UK the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently took enforcement action against Lush, the cosmetics firm, and their press release uses that case to emphasise that organisations must implement PCI DSS, or some equivalent standard, in order to be meet the basic requirements for compliance. This issue was resolved by an undertaking from Lush, but ICO information outlines all the enforcement options and potential penalties.
Compliance to standards doesn’t replace the need to understand potential vulnerabilities, not least when using embedded page elements that can be hijacked!
Glossary:
PCI – Payment Card Industry
PCI DSS – PCI Data Security Standards
CSRF: Cross-Site Request Forgery
IDS : intrusion detection system
IPS: Intrusion Prevention System
ISA: Internal Security Assessor
QSA: Qualified Security Assessor
ISO: Independent Sales Organisation (in this context!)
Links:
• PCI SSC Data Security Standards Overview, from PCI Security Standards Council
• ICO warns retailers to implement PCI-DSS or face “enforcement action”, Security Vibes, 12 Aug 2011
• Online security must be a priority for retailers, says ICO, ICO Press Release, 9 Aug 2011
• Taking action: data protection and privacy and electronic communications, ICO information (including a list of recent prosecutions)
• PCI DSS: An Acquirers guide for PCI Compliance Best Practices, from the PCI Compliance Guide (an independent PCI source)
• Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF), information from the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP)
Posted by Tony Law in Impact of IT, IT is business, ITasITis, Managing IT, Technorati.
Tags: investment, McKinsey, strategy
McKinsey Quarterly poses this question in the latest issue with some case study information. The fundamental issue is an old one: the IT budget being spent on maintenance, with smart investment being what gets squeezed out. But the illustrations suggest ways to move forward. It’s not the old “Align IT with the business” mantra, which still starts from the assumption that IT somehow is outside and separate from “the business” and that the disconnect is IT’s problem.
This article admittedly starts by profiling a dysfunctional CIO who doesn’t understand the issue. But it looks at the issue from the whole business perspective – that is, the CEO’s. It shows how investment can be viewed, even when it’s core infrastructure that’s at issue; it talks about benchmarking capabilities against non-competitive industries, not just competitors; and highlights some of the perceived wisdom which can, sometimes, be plain wrong and a distraction from the real challenges.
How strategic is our technology agenda? McKinsey Quarterly, Oct 2011
Posted by Tony Law in Impact of IT, Insight services, IT is business, IT marketplace, ITasITis, Managing IT, Social issues, Tech Watch, Technorati.
Tags: Green IT Expo
Connection Research is an Australian insight service focussing on sustainability issues. I know of them – they’re in the InformationSpan database – but this encounter at the Green IT event is the first chance I’ve had to hear from a key person; in this case, William Ehmcke the CEO. It’s another META Group spin-off company; William, it appears, led META in Asia-Pacific until it was acquired by Gartner in 2004.
This is an as-it-goes blog, plus a bit of later tidying up.
Connection reckons to work from real data, determining metrics and developing benchmarks. Their areas are: communities; green IT; the built environment; and carbon/compliance (Australia is about to introduce carbon pricing, around A$23/ton).
Connection also recognises “green fatigue” and “greenwash”; but broader issues are gaining prominence for PR; from regulation; or for financial reasons (direct, or indirect because of brand and reputation issues). There’s a perfect storm of issues, because the rise of “big data” is increasing demand; transparency is being demanded; energy security is a rising issue (in Australia as in the USA, though not so much in the UK); and simple cost.
Connection has helped to develop an ICT Sustainability framework and index, with academic partners, across: equipment lifecycle; end user computing; enterprise & data centre; and IT as a low-C enabler. Essentially, in this, is the same distinction as in Simon Mingay’s presentation: doing IT green, and enabling green business by IT. He recognises Bring Your Own plus mobility as a sustainability strategy – it creates fundamental savings and helps reduce the need for permanent facilities on the current scale..
The Fujitsu Global ICT Sustainability report, published Sept 2011, surveyed 80 different areas. It appears that results on the IT Sustainability Index (ITSx; see Connection’s website for more information) have generally regressed recently, and this isn’t a drag effect from emerging economies in China and India. Within the detail, it’s interesting that Government is ahead of the across-sector average index. Surprisingly, brand reputation is driving some “dirty” industry (e.g. mining) up the stack. Nationally, Canada is the leader and the UK second; regulation has been driving this market; and few markets excel in all the sectors.
Ehmcke highlights the major slip in the ITSx for Professional Services; odd, because these industries have only buildings, people and intellectual property. They ought to be easily able to excel; but they don’t, and have slipped relative to 2010 as has, more understandably, manufacturing.
In response to a question: an interesting national measure is GDP value per unit of carbon emission, where Japan leads the way (though not included in the Connection stats; the survey wasn’t done because of the tsunami). Ask how much carbon your enterprise uses per $million of revenue … the use and development of effective metrics is falling back and, without data, action is impossible. Over half the CIOs surveyed have no idea about their IT power consumption, for example.
In response to another question: a point was made that sustainability, in many corporations, is handed to Risk Management (even where there’s a Sustainability Officer), because it’s seen as being about compliance and a holistic view isn’t taken.
A couple more questions, and then a quick outline of the Foundation for IT Sustainability, and the new Green IT Fundamentals course based on licensed training material from Connection, linked to CompTIA, and supported by the Global e.Sustainability Initiative. A useful presentation; the emergence of training, metrics, and certifications is important and the topic was expanded in a presentation from the BCS which I haven’t blogged.
Links:
• Connection Research
• ICT Sustainability: Global Benchmark Report Reveals a Lack of Visibility of the ICT Energy Bill Has Delayed Success, Fujitsu Press Release, 21 Sept 2011: headline summary, with link to obtain a copy of the full report
• Foundation for IT Sustainability (FFITS)
• Global e.Sustainability Initiative (GESI)
Related posts:
• A Gartner perspective on Green IT
• Green 3: Andy Lawrence of 451
Posted by Tony Law in Impact of IT, IT is business, ITasITis, Social issues, Tech Watch, Technorati.
Tags: Green IT Expo
I’m at Central Hall, Westminster – home territory for a Methodist! I’m here for an event and expo on Green IT; waiting for the keynote from Simon Mingay of Gartner. There’s connectivity, so this blog will get periodically updated. Links, as always, will get added later; probably tomorrow.
“What happened to the Green in Green IT”? Both aspects: “Greening of IT” and “Greening with IT”. Mingay’s perspective: Green isn’t the primary agenda; it’s always been about cost, and about saving resources (particularly energy); but the aims coincide. ICT brings together the business information to achieve the targets.
1 – IT organisations have to engage, don’t wait for “the business” to come to you.
2 – IT must innovate, as part of the enterprise’s wider innovation agenda
3 – investment in IT systems must connect to the business’s value generating aspects, not just the “corporate and social responsibility” (CSR) agenda; although CSR is good for profit, this issue goes further.
Some organisations are slipping backwards, believing they’ve ticked the box – this ties up with a later data-driven observation from William Ehmcke of Connection Research. Energy management is a new core competency; demand and prices are both increasing and the resulting pressure on costs is unsustainable. Mingay quotes Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline: “if we don’t do something about it, we’ll be out of the game”. Tactical improvement is not enough!
Mingay highlights various aspects of the enterprise world: corporate initiatives (e.g. Unilever Sustainable Living); vendor acquisitions and partnerships; enhanced regulations (mentioned Scope 3 and see ISO 50000; see Links, below). The focus is moving beyond compliance to a “resource perspective on the organisation”, designed in, continuous (not a once-a-year report), and including the whole supply chain: which isn’t easy!
Gartner offer a Strategic Planning Assumption – one of the tenets which shape their research: “By 2015, sustainability will be an economy-wide, top-five priority for major Western European and North American CEOs.” Though as a colleague at the event commented, this doesn’t identify which current top-five issue will give way to it!
Gartner offer three frameworks to assess:
- sustainability maturity: the more mature the performance, the higher the demand for information enablement
- sustainability value, in five domains varying from Enabling to Contributing (e.g. new business models, new products/services), linked to the run/grow/transform model, with separate scales for private and public sectors;
- solution domans for sustainable business systems: from compliance (low strategic priority) to growth, and from hindsight to foresight, segmented into (a) compliance, risk and governance; (b) enterprise efficiency; and (c) brand/reputation.
Building management is an obvious area where ICT can correlate and analyse the data from environmental monitoring and control, and deliver cost and eco benefit. Mingay isn’t the first to highlighted the opportunities for FM and ICT to work together; we know about this one from a Leading Edge Forum Study Tour in, I think, 2007.
And guess what, there’s a Sustainability Hype Cycle … the key point is the very large number of technologies mapped on it. Energy-efficient IT is mainstream (“mostly”), he says. But sustainable IT is still stuck in a niche, considering aspects such as toxics and e-waste and pigeon-holed with these issues. Supply chain issues, and systemic energy efficiency (middleware, network, application) are at present still stuck in “academia”, he says – what this means is that the fundamental research on how to identify, measure and model these issues is still being done.
Three stages: optimisation (current); innovation (starting – lots of “adopted innovation” which isn’t really new, and not yet seeing attitude changes especially towards compromise on performance and availability); paradigm change (rare, as yet, but the shift to Cloud has the potential to be one). Examples: data centre infrastructure management (DCIM), treating the whole data centre as a system, with PUE modelling, active power management and so on. Gartner are bringing this topic into their Data Centre and Infrastructure/Operations events. He offered some perspectives on emerging DC design trends, in a modular “build small, build often” approach. There is a list of “ten things to think of next” – starting with measurement! The two key optimisation parameters are space, and compute power per kWh, and sustainability governance is essential for progress (with IT fully engaged).
If you think you’re done on Green IT, you haven’t understood the issues!
Links:
• Sustainable Living Plan, from Unilever, aims to” develop new ways of doing business which will increase the social benefits from Unilever’s activities while at the same time reducing our environmental impacts”
• There’s information on the ISO 50000 family of standards on the ISO Helpline (and in many other places!)
• Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Value Chain Accounting and Reporting Standard, also known as Scope 3, from the World Resources Institute
• Hype Cycle for Sustainability and Green IT, 2011, Gartner, 28 Jul 2011 (available to subscribers only; if this link doesn’t work, search for document G00214739)
Related posts:
• Green IT; encountering Connection Research
• Green 3: Andy Lawrence of 451
Posted by Tony Law in Cloud, Consumerization, IT is business, IT marketplace, ITasITis, Managing IT, Tech Watch, Technorati.
I’m at a BCS North London event at Google’s London office, listening to presenters from the AppsBroker consultancy extend my understanding of how Google Apps work. We’ve passed through the background stuff about using cloud apps in general and now getting to the meat. If you’ve wondered, like me, what Google APIs can really do, then this is an as-it-goes posting; watch the space! Any errors in understanding or interpretation are mine, of course.
How to write a Google-extended app …
1 – Appscript; 2 – Gadget APIs; s – Data APIs
1: Appscript = Javascript extended. Primarily for spreadsheets plus elements such as contacts, calendar, finance, sites, docs list, maps (some of these are in Labs).
Just seeing the down side of everything being online rather than on the device; the demo’s gone down through being unconnected. Notwithstanding that I’m doing this on Google’s guest network,, the demo doc is, it appears, “offline”. Embarrassing, even when the demo’s working on a ChromeBook, which admittedly does reboot nice and quickly!
When it’s come back, we get a quick view of the script code inserted into a Spreadsheet to quickly create a form with follow-on technology such as mail-outs based on the respondent’s input, or sending update notifications when an online document is changed.
2: Data APIs, based on REST rather than SOAP (HTML based, IIRC, but can use other languages eg. Java/script .NET, …). Can for example use Data APIs to push data into a shared spreadsheet in real time from multiple users/locations/sources, but maintaining one version of truth.
3: Gadget APIs: simple HTML/Javascript to extend gadgets. Example shown: a smart reschedule for a shared meeting. Looks a lot like the calendaring that Lotus Notes has done for years!
Google App Engine and Cloud Storage will have a >99.9% SLA from November. Cloud SQL (see Google Blog last week) is under beta.
— adding to the interest level, we just had a fire evacuation and a quick tour of Eccleston Square with the fire marshals. Now trickling back – at least, most of us. I think some people have decided to duck out.
In the pipeline: Google Big Query: online dataset analysis – data mining/BI application. And something called the Google Periodic Table (there’s an extra column in the Transition Metal section …) which visualises the family of applications and extensions. Prediction, for example, can look at web traffic and draw interesting conclusions. Lots of searches on “sore throat” might signal the start of a flu epidemic.
Abbreviated in response to the disruption: Dalim, chair of the Branch, talking about governance. What changes with the cloud? Some of the controls e.g. for change management; assurance from third parties, and provider management; identity and access management (d0 you still have super users?) and monitoring; evolving technology, complexity and challenges. Dalim offers an app assurance checklist [see BCS NLB website in due course].
Q&A … references to Google’s global infrastructure capability; e.g. guaranteeing at least four copies of data on different continents (that is, replication like Lotus Notes used to do). Regarding data protection issues – Google can’t at present commit to (for example) segregating data into the EU though this is being worked on. The offering currently may not be appropriate for heavily regulated in-country enterprises e.g. some areas of government, finance. Google, though, takes the approach that they are not data owners; they are data holders, and would pass access requests to the data owners. And there are data online about which countries request legal discovery, how often, and when. From the security point of view, just a glimpse of the multiple levels of protection applied to data.
Thinking about a portfolio of services: Google Apps will integrate both on-premise (e.g. with AD) and other cloud services (e.g. a strategic partnership with salesforce.com). And there’s a commitment to back data out if a service relationship is terminated. Cloud, to Google, is short term contractable (e.g. 12 month; or a little as 1 month) – no lock-in.
Links:
• Google Apps (follow the links)
• Google App Engine, Cloud Storage and Prediction API are open for business, Official Google Blog, 11 Oct 2011
• BCS North London Branch: Past Events 2011 (you may have to scroll for this event; presentations are not yet posted but are expected)
• AppsBroker consultancy
Posted by Tony Law in Cloud, Impact of IT, IT is business, ITasITis, Social issues, Social media, Tech Watch, Technorati.
I’ve joined the online Cloudforce webcast to view Mark Benioff’s keynote. I’m not able to stay online for the whole two hours, but this is notes as far as I can go.
Benioff has pitched that a new revolution has happened: the role that social technology plays and the depth of its integration into society as a whole has changed in the last year. Interestingly, the broadcast is via Facebook, not one of the established Web Meeting platforms. No registration. Just “Like” the page to join the broadcast. And Twitter feeds for the speakers linked on the page at the time they’re on stage (not when they’re off). We’ll come back to that point.
In the preliminaries at the point I joined, a key point from the JP Ramaswami: businesses need to value relationships not just customers. And now there is an enormous quantity of real data, cheap to collect, to back up research into online interactions. The emphasis being on learning and understanding what makes relationships really work.
A black screen while the broadcast switches to “Cloudforce London”. And a marketing video, pushing Salesforce Chatter but showcasing (at a headline level) how Salesforce is supporting a host of responsive apps to provide customers of banks, cars, coffee shops and more with immediate useful information. Where’s my nearest ATM? What’s my car’s engine temperature? And so on.
Here’s Benioff. A paean of praise to Thomas Watson, Ken Olson and Michael Dell – guess which one is billed as a speaker? – also Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. But the theme is a new area of innovation, and the mix and impact of social technology into society is (he believes) new.
He cited the Arab Spring, which is certainly the current high profile example: not “hard power” or “soft power” but “social power”. And he asks: is there going to be a “Corporate Spring” with the end of in-enterprise dictatorships in a similar paradigm?
People have to respond. There are now more social network users than email, and very nearly Facebook (and Twiter) *is* the Web. And people use mobile apps (smartphones, iPad) more than web browsers; the laptop is out of date for on-the-move information access. The current Forbes cover headlines: Social Power and the coming Corporate Revolution.
Moving into the message for business, he asks for (1) next generation social profiling for customers: they are, after all, on Facebook, Twitter, and wherever else. Then (2) create an employee social network and enable staff to use this information. Returning to this, Benioff talks about creating (a few years back) an internal Facebook-alike which, crucially, is integrated with their main platform. Salesforce Chatter is now available to customers, and is going through a major upgrade, sue in a couple of weeks: presence added to IM, connection to other networks, filters, workflow (approvals). Customer groups (sounds a bit like Google Plus circles) extend the concept to external customers, including file sharing and all sorts of other things; it sounds like some major education will be needed to establish who can share what, and who can commit the company to what.
(3) I intially missed as I had to step out of the room: develop the next generation sales cloud. Benioff highlighted Groupon as a fast growing company; I’m not yet clear whether this means Salesforce is integrating Groupon. And then data.com helping keep up to date as people change their facebook profiles, Twitter handles and so on.
I’d comment, though, that on my first business flight to California – twenty years ago – they were clearly already thinking that way although the information available was less. On my return flight there were some of the same crew as I’d had outbound. I’d swear I was remembered. And although the practical guess is that they’d “just” checked the database, the point is that they had done so. It’s not “just”.
I hade to drop off the broadcast. On return, the webcast is towards the end of an extended case study of Toyota’s new Toyota Friend network which provides easy information about a car’s status, problems, service schedule, and so on – with the dealer able to schedule an appointment and communicate through the network. Not that any of this information hasn’t been available before; what’s added is the integration into a social framework (and, of course, driven by Salesforce).
I’ll see if I can catch up later, and tidy up some of this information – with a link to the recording if possible, but otherwise have a look at the US Dreamforce keynote. Perhaps the key point, if you take Benioff’s point about the rapid and revolutionary integration of social technologies, is that Salesforce is not only preaching the “social enterprise”; it’s becoming one, and the use of Facebook and Twitter explicitly to support this event is part of it.
Links:
• Salesforce Chatter
• Keynote from Dreamforce in the US
• Groupon
• data.com
• Toyota Friend: Salesforce.com and Toyota Form Strategic Alliance to Build ‘Toyota Friend’ …, Toyota US Press Release, 23 May 2011; and Twitter feed (protected for approved members only)
Posted by Tony Law in Cloud, IT is business, ITasITis, Tech Watch, Technorati.
A LinkedIn post flagged me to a Forbes report about a spat between Mark Benioff (that’s salesforce.com to you and me) and Larry Ellison (Oracle). About the definition, or the understanding, of Cloud.
Well, the first interesting thing about the report is that it’s not in some tech geek publication. It’s in Forbes, which rich people read. If ever there was a candidate for airline management’s key publication, it could be this one. It does rather confirm, doesn’t it, that Cloud (we used to say Cloud Computing) is mainstream business news.
And the second thing is that it confirms, as we already knew, that Cloud has become one of those Humpty Dumpty words. You know: When I use a word (said Humpty Dumpty to Lewis Carroll’s Alice) it means exactly what I tell it to mean, neither more nor less. It’s happened in every IT generation. Working backwards, we certainly include Grid, we include “e” (as a prefix, such as “eServerFarms”), and we probably include client-server. And more, I’m sure.
As an adviser, facilitator and consultant I need to understand what people are thinking when they say “Cloud”, and it can be a lot of things these days. It’s my perception (and I’m by no means alone) that a lot of what’s marketed as Cloud today is one of:
• old-fashioned hardware-based outsourcing to a remote data centre
• web services
• some newer form of outsourcing
always with long term contracts, fixed prices, security, and and and …
We can do better. But first, there are a couple of things Cloud doesn’t need to be.
It doesn’t have to be “cheap”. This is a benefit in many cases, but not a fundamental. And in any case it’s relative: a service used for a short period may be expensive per unit, but still cheaper overall than provisioning your own “stuff” which you have to lay in for the long term. A comparison: taxi fares aren’t “cheap”, but if you don’t need permanent access to your own car then occasional taxis have the edge over the long term capital and recurrent costs of running one. But the key point is: no payment in advance, no commitment to spend levels, no true-up.
And it needn’t be “public”. I’m perfectly happy to include what are called “private cloud” services in the definition, so long as they are still true Cloud by the criteria below. But the key point here is: Cloud is not just a new word for a conventionally provisioned in-house data centre.
Many, many service vendors are rebranding their outsourced or managed services as “Cloud” to cash in on the hype. There’s a massive overlap between what we consider “virtualised” and what we consider “Cloud”. And service buyers are adding to this by insisting that cloud services must be as secure, stable and long-term an investment as any other outsourcing deal. Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt ride again.
Some (many) years ago, I was part of the team operating a then-new ICL 2980 for London University. The “V” in “VME/B” stood for “Virtual” and we had to learn (and explain to the users) the differences of a virtualised system and the advantages it could offer in the way they approached its use. Yes, this was the totally modern 1980s. Other operating systems were “going virtual” too, and one of the trade papers (I think it was Computer Weekly) ran a definition I’ve always remembered:
If it’s there, and you can see it: it’s REAL
If it’s there, and you CAN’T see it: it’s TRANSPARENT
If it’s NOT there, and you CAN see it: it’s VIRTUAL
If it’s NOT there, and you CAN’T see it: it’s GONE.
I think we add one more:
If it’s NOT there until you WANT it: it’s CLOUD.
And here are my criteria for a service to be called Cloud:
• accessed over the network using Internet protocols
• available immediately on demand
• de-provisioned immediately after use
• easy sign-up
• no long term commitment to the service provider …
• … nor by the provider to the customer
• payment strictly by usage metering
• payment after the fact, not in advance
• as near infinitely flexible capacity as can be
Links:
• Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff Just Can’t Agree: What Is the Cloud? Forbes, 6 Sep 2011
• ICL VME, Wikipedia
