Archive for April, 2008

Do you archive?

Published by Ben Kepes on April 23, 2008 in Efficiency, IT, SaaS, Strategy and Web x.0. 2 Comments

Vaibhav posted this saying that it was a mistake for Gmail users to automatically hit the archive button instead of delete. (For those who don’t use Gmail, Google encourages users to archive old mail rather than delete it - so it’s still there for eternity should it be needed - I’ve accumulate 20000 emails since I begun using Gmail!).

Vaibhav’s rationale is as follows;

  • Protect the Environment - the more space that you occupy in your Gmail account the more servers Google will have to put up to provide that Space. The more servers there are, the more electricity they will consume. This will of course have a direct impact on the environment.

While this might sound silly - how much impact a 1kb email you ask - remember that the environmental impact of society is just the aggregate of all our individual impacts…

  • Protect yourself from Information Overload - you know how even Google Search gives you so many irrelevant results when you search. Well not everyone is a Google Search Ninja, and thus cannot arrive at what they are looking for easily. Similarly if you archive everything that you get in your Gmail, and God forbid if you have to search for something later on in life, you will be presented with so many emails in your search results that you will not even know where to begin.

True - I probably have 1000 or so old TradeMe notifications - there is absolutely no reason for them to still be there. But they are…

  • Security Considerations - Say you don’t delete emails at all and archive them all. Say somehow you manage to be careless and someone hacks your account and gets access to your Gmail. Hmm, now this hacker can access all your passwords that have been sent to you by various sites all over the Internet. This hacker can access all the financial statements that you have received from your bank. You should delete sensitive information from your online account.

Hmmmm - we all have lots of passwords to remember and in the absence of ubiquitous OpenID we need to record them somehow, no?

  • Do you trust Google? - Do you really want Google to have access to all these emails of yours? A lot of people don’t trust Google and for that reason simply don’t use Gmail. However, even if you do use Gmail, you should minimize your exposure by only saving those things which YOU think are going to be useful to you in the future.

Yes but if we really have concerns about Google then we’d put nothing through Gmail - if we don’t trust them to not misuse our mail then why do we trust them to not duplicate our data to their own storage?

Me I’ll just keep on archiving - it’s a happy whose deleterious effects I can live with…

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Can Telcos sell software (or anything other than POTS for that matter)?

Published by Ben Kepes on April 22, 2008 in IT and Strategy. 2 Comments

An interesting post over on Marc’s blog got me thinking. In his post Marc contends that;

Telco’s online reach is smaller than they think. Sure Telco’s have large customer bases but the only time I have gone to my Telco’s website was when I upgraded my ISP plan. It’s anecdotal I admit. What’s your use of their websites like?

Well maybe - but Telcos have a massive channel that they can leverage in new ways in order to sell diverse products. BT Tradespace is an example of this.

Telco’s have bad websites. When I did upgrade my plan, the website navigation experience was agonising. A good analogy is government versus corporate. Their web mail was one of the worst I’ve seen.

Again just because a particular telco has a bad site doesn’t mean they can’t create a parallel path that does work in this 2.0 world

They are big but that doesn’t guarantee a win. When Telco’s spend to compete they serve up a high Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) number for their competitors to squeeze them against. Lean startups can squeeze margins tighter, and if they can hang on to triple digit growth rates then they can drop a big Telco Goliath with a very small stone.

This part I agree with - Telcos need to find ways to circumvent their own high internal COGS while still retaining the benefits of the asset created. This is where partnering, outsourcing and JVs can come in

Telco’s are good at being Utilities, full stop. This is appliance market versus utility market difference. Just because your toaster is an appliance on an electricity network doesn’t mean your electricity utility will be a good toaster maker. They are very different markets, very different sales approaches, very different products and require very different people to execute.
Telcos had the wrong skill set. Telco’s are big ships. Changing the crew from sailors to steam engineers wasn’t and still isn’t quick or easy. Even worse, short web application lifecycles requires you to destroy your mother ship by building newer and better technology quickly. Telco’s extract long term value from long term fixed assets. Two years is frightening when you normally invest for twenty years in fixed assets.
Web business’s tend to invent. Telco’s tend to be slow followers while web startups who successfully commercialise have tended to come from the womb of inventiveness. University assignments (Google), for the fun of it (YouTube) or everyday business problems that need fixing (Salesforce.com). Telco’s tend not to think this way.

But they can take their skills and resources (domain knowledge, money, infrastructure, money, networks, money) and form relationships with partners who can do more than just being utilities. They can find partners that are nimble and agile - how is this any different from other large organisations going down the M&A or partnership path and finding agility and inventive ideas from bit players?

Lessons learnt. Many Telco’s have already tried and failed. Telco’s, since 2000, have been desperately trying to replace falling fixed-line revenues. They just didn’t understand these web business, the appliances of the net. The revenue messiah didn’t come. Consumers were flocking to cool niche shops like iTunes not the big Telco department stores.

Never say never Marc - who remembers when Michael Dell advised Apple to just shut up shop. Don’t discount telcos so readily.

At the end of the day time will tell whether Telcos are a one show pony (and therefore doomed to a slow and irreversible death_ I think they have the potential to keep winning but agree that it will take a big jump in terms of openess and adoption of new practices for them to succeed.

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ReadWriteWeb: Enterprise 2.0 To Become a $4.6 Billion Industry By 2013

Published by Mike Riversdale on April 21, 2008 in IT and Web x.0. 0 Comments

(cross posting from Mike Riversdale: Enterprise 2.0 New Zealand style blog)

Enterprise 2.0 To Become a $4.6 Billion Industry By 2013 - thank golly for that, all I have to do is hang on until then and I’m rolling in it?!?

A new report released today by Forrester Research is predicting that enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies is going to increase dramatically over the next five years. This increase will include more spending on social networking tools, mashups, and RSS, with the end result being a global enterprise market of $4.6 billion by the year 2013.

I do like that they have a whole section of the post dedicated to the loving IT Department:

Getting Past the I.T. Gatekeeper

One of the main challenges of getting Web 2.0 into the enterprise will be getting past the gatekeepers of traditional I.T. Businesses have been showing interest in these new technologies, but, ironically, the interest comes from departments outside of I.T. Instead, it’s the marketing department, R&D, and corporate communications pushing for the adoption of more Web 2.0-like tools.

Unfortunately, as often is the case, the business owners themselves don’t have the knowledge or expertise to make technology purchasing decisions for their company. They rely on I.T. to do so - a department that currently spends 70% of their budget maintaining past investments.

…

And there’s where I come in.

I do not work for IT. I do, however, have the knowledge AND expertise you require.
Call me, 027-657 7144 or drop me a line mike.riversdale@miramarmike.co.nz

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