No End to E-commerce
8 February 2005 by Adam Cuothe
According to Linux Insider‘s Jennifer LeClaire:
“A stroll down memory lane reminds us of terms like ‘stickiness,’ ‘eyeballs’ and ‘personalization’ that once captured the essence of articles about what it takes to be successful on the Web. However, even as we look back at 10 years of growth, many analysts have one eye on the future and they are saying, we’ve got a long way to go.”
I agree that we’ll see a lot of change and innovation in the e-commerce domain, but I disagree with the feeling that there is a long way to go.
LeClaire notes how Forrester research has figured on-line sales account for about 12 percent of retail sales. Whether that number is cozy for those people purveying via the popular domain of yesteryear’s phreaks is one thing. I’ll bet they believe there is always room for improvement. Why mention phreaks? This is about the evolution of e-commerce, we ought to start at the genesis. Remember the days when a kid in Holland could make a phree phone call to order himself a shiny new laptop computer with a borrowed credit card number? And have it delivered? Where did he get credit card number? A BBS. Back then, the BBSes couldn’t help much for customer relationship management, nor could they support much in the way of predictive customer behaviours, but they offered a personalization feature or two (like personalized colors, usernames/handles, and e-mail). Reflect on that.
The on-line experience has evolved but saying it has a long way to go, implies its going somewhere, it has an end. I don’t mean an end to buying on-line but an end to the evolution of the on-line experience. Could it be that this experience can reach a saturation point in terms of ease-of-use, availability, accessibility, and effectiveness? Forrester’s predictions for on-line retail extend to 2010, is that our end-point?
In fact, let’s make a full circle back to the phone arena (our phreaking phriends I mentioned above) Ms. LeClaire points out the rapidly expanding cellphone consumption services that hook in with our Web-based e-commerce. The “E” is for electronic after all and all that is electronic will be inter-netted. So forget about feeling like there is an evolutionary end, that’s not the question on which we should be inquiring. Instead think about the what will happen in the e-commerce expansion as we move into access points and methodologies currently unheard of. The phone is as good as conquered.
Are You Being Informed? BI for Everyone
13 January 2005 by Adam Cuothe
According to TEC‘s Mukhles Zaman about business intelligence:
Based on present trends, the use of BI will become so widespread that every desktop will have a BI icon. BI will become an integral part of an enterprise’s information system and, like word processing software, BI will be used by almost all end users, business users, and government officials to gauge whether their strategies are aligned with their companies’ overall strategic plan.
This is quite a statement. Imagine the coming office desktop, bundled not only with word processing, spreadsheets, project management, web and e-mail, and presentation apps, but also BI tools, dashboards, etc. I like the idea, why not keep all employees on their toes with the directional health of a business as it happens? Let them do their jobs and adjust their activities as a reflex to the company’s spinal tingling.
The author goes on to define business intelligence in all its glory and differentiates it from specialized analytics systems. I question his use of “artificial business intelligence” as a new term–that is perhaps not the most fruitful result of a BI & AI (artificial intelligence) mating. Nevertheless there is a lot of overview for the BI neophyte, which it seems many will find useful provided Zaman’s prediction proves correct.
Method to Relieve an Itch–Patent Scratching
11 January 2005 by Adam Cuothe
Worry pas, vinyl artisans this isn’t about scratching in that sense, rather the “fresh” starts to patents that appeared in today’s news.
For one, take the Heise report, which declares that the EU may start all over from scratch on its computer-implemented inventions patentability proposal. I think this is a positive development as it sets back the monopolistic interests that, in their infinite silliness think they can control something like software.
In the same day, we learn that IBM has chosen to grant free access to 500 of its patents to the open source community. That is, IBM wants to start a “patent commons” which I imagine might be something that could work similar to the creative commons. In the IBM case though, these patents could be used unrestricted so long as they’re used in open source projects. The flip side to IBM’s move is reported in the New York Times.
I.B.M. may be redefining its intellectual property strategy, but it apparently has no intention of slowing the pace of its patent activity. I.B.M. was granted 3,248 patents in 2004…
The article also mentions a number of other well-known companies for their high patent mass.
What is unclear in the article and really really deserves clarification is the nature of these patents. Patents in and of themselves may not necessarily be harmful as many people tend to consider them these days. Something like a software patent or the patents issued for things like algorithms manifested in software are, in my opinion, quite wrong-headed, damaging one’s inclination toward the free thinking required to invent and innovate. However, there are many types of things for which patents are issued, which might be toward beneficial uses. Or might not. It’s hard to say without more greater discussion. The New York Times should at least have called attention to some areas in which controversy spews its offspring with great, lewd slapping sounds made by lawyers, greed-mongers, and an activist or two. Why didn’t the article at least give a short paragraph to the consequential fallout, which surrounds why these patents are well-issued or issued with negligence to due-forsight and critical analysis.
The article hypes the excitement of a big company giving patents to the underdog (or as Bill Gates might construe the nasty little communists) but fails to bring the real issues about why IBM’s moves are significant, to light. I’d say it must be difficult for the uninitiated to see the poignance of this news.
And that’s why I combined it with the European Union news on patents. Take the two together, find out why the EU controversy is more than just political jokeying from newer members. Finally, compare that with the fact that IBM is spending copious amounts on patents to turn over to a lovely community that would be happy invent something and ask the rest of the world to have its way at liberty.
A Wikied Guru is Given
4 January 2005 by Adam Cuothe
Back from the holiday, I am.
And from DM Europe
GuruNet, a provider of online reference information, has launched Answers.com, a site-and-software combination providing reference answers rather than lists of search engine links
I tried GuruNet’s (now answer.com) desktop application a few years back. I remember the idea seemed fantastic… just click words anywhere on your desktop to do some research. Now you can do it by typing your question into the web site. It’s a bit like ask Jeeves (search in the form of a question), Yahoo (a taxonomy-ooooo), and Google (answers?), who all still wish they’d thought to call themselves Oracle before Oracle did. The web still hasn’t found its true wise man (or woman), just a wise nut. Seems GuruNet is selling results to Amazon’s A9, which causes one to continue wondering on volatility in the Google Toolbar –> Alexa (0wned by Amazon) web user stat collecting phenomenon.
GuruNet let me down in a few ways. First, its desktop app is a little gadget that has mostly been eclipsed by browser toolbars, integrated desktop search utilities, and if you’re running something like KDE on Linux, there’s an incredibly handy “dictionary” applet. Second, when I did a search for “a dogfaced stigma” it returned zero results. Why, guru, why? Must I seek a companion in Jeeves? Finally, while they get great kudos for properly making use of creative commons-licensed wikipedia content, that seems to be the bulk and most interesting of their content results. The rest of their information appears as a laundry list of reference content. I’d like to believe the GuruNet gurus will grow their results to be more useful than republishing already collected information. They should implement a system, which sorts and intelligently aids the user to find his/her research. Build in some sort of helpful weighing system to present the better responses in a more active format for the user. One idea would be to marry their system with something of the graphical search tool like kartoo.com.
Gripping the Grid
21 December 2004 by Adam Cuothe
Quocirca on an IBM PR of grid status:
The key to doing something practical with Grid is not to focus purely on the nirvana of automatic allocation and deallocation of computing resources to different applications on demand…
The report continues to talk about how to better use a companies IT assets through grid computing. Nice, this pool of computing loveliness that is so tappable–or someday soon will be. Still, a majority of companies haven’t figured out how to get into using this technology. This will be an area to watch and IBM seems to be ready to take a good part in it, but as the Register article says it may be missing the boat with its lackluster or misdirected messaging.
Anyway, that’s just a little something to tide people over. I’m on holiday and won’t be updating the ol’ blog for a couple weeks.
Come to me, my dear new year.
C-Level Mindreading
14 December 2004 by Adam Cuothe
Meridith Levinson has done a pleasant little write-up for the CIO:
Reading facial expressions is a particularly useful skill for business executives because, so often in business settings, people don’t say what they really think… This knowledge and ability can make CIOs more aware of unspoken political tensions in board or executive committee meetings.
I do enjoy these body language segments, especially when they’re applied to political situations on television: “Let’s review the internal life of Paul Martin and George Bush as they jockey for the spirit of their spectators.”
Being more tentative and aware of one’s peers or colleagues ought to be both a useful technique and a good thing to practice simply for improving communication. Actually, I’d venture to say that there is a much large population of non-C-level laborers that might benefit by springing for the Paul Ekman CD, the CIO article is hawking. I suppose most people are in subtle ways, aware, and respond likewise. The constant push of sites bearing ONE HUNDRED NEW SMILIES, reminds me of this impulse. E-mail and the web tend to leave out the possibility for body language interpretation.
Except the CIO article offers a scary test, which brings it all into the present.
The Insidious Sound of Swarming
13 December 2004 by Adam Cuothe
From Mr. Chapweske’s Blog
The technology improves swarming by ensuring that the bytes that the user wants next are scheduled to be received next… Under the covers it is almost unimaginably more complicated than this because it also provides Self-Healing Downloads, implements a full-blown, scalable, Web Proxy Cache… constantly monitoring and adapting to changing network conditions.
Interesting stuff, this swarming system. The primary thing I see it doing is taking down companies like Intraware that have built an entire business on delivering software without its box. See, Intraware prides itself on being able to accommodate the large software vendors’ needs in licensing entitlements, upgrade and patch services, and purchasing download accessibility. It doesn’t sound like much of a deal at first but then you realize that these big software vendors have a lot to trace when they need to get critical software to their customers in a reliable way.
Perhaps this notion sounded good to a venture capitalist or two back in the day, but the world has advanced and anyone with a little foresight ought to have been able to see that such a service could be built in-house without too much difficulty. Really Intraware is just a very specific sort of outsourcing host. With Bit Torrent technology and now swarming, all the nice features Intraware was focusing on, could be more efficiently replicated via Onion Network‘s technology.
Oh the Toil
9 December 2004 by Adam Cuothe
Barry Wilderman at Meta recently:
There is dynamic tension between an organization’s ERP backbone and best-in-class applications in the overall portfolio. Organizations should evaluate (at least once a year) whether to replace best-in-class applications with similar ERP modules (or, more rarely, the converse).
Sounds good. I get a little stuck with some parts of the article though (no, not the “return on intelligence”). Barry asks us to follow the “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” cliche. Then continues to offer a series of good advice type questions to reflect on. No, to busy oneself with. Namely, survey the user base, collect all kinds of information about what the application is doing for each of its users, figure out future requirements. Ok, but do all of this once a year? That could mean a lot of work. And this is all to begin figuring out if it will be a good idea to move from one’s best-in-class system to something the ERP vendor might be doing a better job of lately.
It sounds like it can make sense to be aware and do these types of reviews. It makes me wonder though, with all the work involved if there might be a better way to go about it. Once a year comes around pretty fast.
How can a company capture their requirements, research, user information one year, tie it their system’s functionality, and easily get an up-to-date comparison review the next? Not only does one have to track one’s own company information, but also all of the applicable vendor information in the market.
Really–I just hate the expression “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
IT Demand Trends and Freebies
2 December 2004 by Adam Cuothe
Since I found Aberdeen’s free trial yesterday, I decided to see what free trials I could get from other analyst firms. In the process I got sidetracked with an interesting little comparison. Gartner has something they call their IT Watch Technology Demand Index. No free trial and they really bury any information about what the potential cost might be–must be exhorbitant, but a bit of teaser info is offered up-front. For instance,
Demand for IT products and services will strengthen in 2005. Optimism expressed by respondents for increased 2005 budgets is growing stronger as year-end approaches. Budget decision makers in small businesses (fewer than 100 employees) are the most optimistic.
Typical Gartner bubble-head prediction. What is interesting is what they base it on. According to the web site “Gartner surveys over 75 CIOs and key decision-makers every week about their IT spending. Then Gartner analyzes data and determines if IT spending is more or less than anticipated for the current fiscal quarter.”
Compare that to the freebie I found at Technology Evaluation Centers, namely their “Q” report (they do offer a complimentary copy, albeit an old one). It tells us quite precisely (in the PDF teaser)
Key Findings for Q3 2004
- Globally, 42.2% of global inquiries had budgets of less than $100,000 (USD).
- In the Americas region, 52.9% of inquiries are from the manufacturing sector.
- In the Americas region, 54.2% of inquiries named Windows as the server platform of choice.
- In Asia-Pacific, 38.8% of inquiries are large multinationals with five or more locations, an increase of 9.9 percentiles from Q3 2003.
And those juicy bits, they say, come from over 5,000 global technology decision makers. Well it doesn’t take much effort to see which of these reports is more useful. I like some hard information as opposed to some nebulous predictions. And while not cheap, at least these guys were up front with their costs.
While I continue to have some weird fun with free analyst trials, I’m enjoying a good beer. Maybe I’ll see what Forrester has brewing next.
Does an Outsourced Human Still Have a Life Cycle?
1 December 2004 by Adam Cuothe
I just read through bits of Dr. Jones’s HR Outsourcing report at Aberdeen. The report focuses on mid-size companies and it looks like ultimately, they may not be all that interested early on–some of its interesting stats:
- 71% of middle market respondents simply were not persuaded that HRO provided enough value to undertake it or add to what they outsource today.
- 51% were unconvinced that HRO would be better than their internal HCM management.
(Aberdeen offered a thirty day free trial for its research… might as well take advantage.)
For the little guy that doesn’t have to worry about inter-region tax accounting, and other issues that spring from the good growth, outsourcing HR just doesn’t appear a benefit. I’m waiting for the day when companies outsource all their departments. What’ll we end up with? A general manager and someone called the CEO who occasionally drops in from out of town to yell corporate hosannahs into the rowdy stock-traders before heading to another company in which he’s the outsourced chief visionary.
One section in the report is called Human Capital Life Cycle Management–In-house or Outsourced? This gets defined into categories like employee records, HR employee call centers, training, employee assistance programs, performance evaluation, outplacement, health and safety. Looks like the employee assistance programs are the most likely to be outsourced already whereas employee records are the least likely to ever be outsourced. Isn’t that a relief. Help from afar and one’s personal info stays private. Disturbing though, that we’re now talking about the “human capital life cycle management” area. I wonder what kind of SLA they offer for CEO life cycle.
I suppose marketing personnel will finally have a reason to talk “cradle-to-grave.”
How Sweet is Sugar?
29 November 2004 by Adam Cuothe
In his article on SugarCRM it seems Mr. Chalifour at The FOSS Evaluation Center gives us a pretty clear answer. He shows how products like GoldMine or Microsoft’s CRM bury Sugar on the functionality front, those with a sweet tooth shouldn’t give up, there’s more.
SugarCRM began by focusing on a few core areas, in particular, as an open source product it would be responding closely to the demands of its core user base. Often with open source projects, if there isn’t a high demand for specific functionality, namely if a client company doesn’t have reason to sponsor the development of that functionality or developers have not had reason to code it, that functionality won’t show up in the product. The converse is true as well, when the user community starts demanding a feature, it gets developed rather quickly. The latter point was made clear in SugarCRM’s practice.
All good points. Not only does the article give us the good with the bad, but it does it based on what a customer had in mind while buying the solution. What? Buying? Yes, this is an example of open source making cash-money! I wonder how many other companies will take this to heart? I wish more analyst firms could back up their points like this, with examples and analyses.
In any case I’ve got to say that it only makes sense, our poor sugardog is the underdog… they started up in early 2004, hardly much time to put something big and corporate ass-kicking together – but they seem to have their priorities in-line. I hope we get a chance to follow up with this.
Service My Oriented Architectures
24 November 2004 by Adam Cuothe
Thanks to Johanna Ambrosio at TechTarget for the article on web services ROI
Another problem in calculating Web services ROI is that “we don’t really have very good spending estimates,” Gartner’s Harris said. “There are different pieces needed from different vendors, and I haven’t seen anything that’s really apples-to-apples at this point.” Without a good understanding of the budget outlay needed, ROI is impossible to nail down accurately, particularly for larger and more complex types of Web services projects.
No offense Johanna, your article is just fine, I love quotes from the Gartner jello factory of babble-heads. The one Johanna cited above for example… different is different and when different isn’t an apple just like the other apples then it’s really hard say if it is or if it isn’t uniquely different as much as it is an apple. That’s my take on the wobbly nutritional nothingness we got as a quote. I guess the article was balanced with a more fatty Gartner quote, not to mention a few gems from ZapThink, which were certainly more interesting (they offer clues but confirm the lack of ROI).
What am I interested in here? The writing? Yes. I also like (and maybe this is your interest as well) the way our IT boom has gone from having fast, easy-to-use client desktop applications, to stumbling with web form interconnectivity? I don’t understand, and in a way, that’s what this reduces to. I know it isn’t fair to talk about things on the “wrong” level but I’ve seen plenty of attempts to come up with ROI calculations for more complex and messy interactions. Service me with a little bitty SOA college try.
