The economic crisis that we are facing today may well benefit the SaaS market. Companies are now more conscious and careful about cashflow and will be less willing to invest high capital expenditure on software licences. Besides, one striking benefit of SaaS is the scalability and low risk of technology obsolescence since the risk is shifted to the provider. But, to all the SaaS providers out there, you gotta really understand that SMBs are usually less tech-savvy and have little IT resources at their disposal. In fact, many of the smaller SMBs are still relying on paper and pencil or basic excel spreadsheet to do their invoices and timesheet. To increase the adoption rate, SaaS providers should offer free training for first time users regardless how idiot-proof you think your application is and always offer free trial with no obligation. In addition, customer testimonials are always good to have. You can also see how to influence the government policies or work with business associations to provide some incentives to encourage the SMBs to adopt SaaS.
Poohwinn | Technology . Design . Creativity . Web2.0
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Why Apple iPhone Succeeds and Other Fail
Today Nokia announced that its profit for the fourth-quarter has declined by a whopping 69% and sales declined by 19%. Every $1 drop in revenue translates to 3.6x drop in profit. That's very very steep decline. It's a double whammy for Nokia. It lost market share at the lucrative high end and sales did not fly during the holiday season in the growth markets such as China. Nokia has also invested alot of money into the Come with Music initative. The price differential for a phone that has Come with Music and one that doesn't can be as much as $100 or more. I think in the hard times like today, it's going to be a uphill battle to squeeze that incremental revenue from consumer. Again, not surprisingly, about 1,000 job cuts were annouced. Just a week ago Motorola announced 4,000 layoffs and it would only roll out 12 phone models in a year. For smartphones, it will only produce for Android platform and the first Android handset is slated for Q2 2009 in the US.
The big software giant microsoft is not spared either. Its earning fell in second quarter on the back of weaker sales, resulting in earnings of 47 cents a share against analysts' estimate of 49 cents a share. 1,400 people were let go immediately and upto 5,000 in total are expected to be laid off.
Well not all is bad news. Apple had reported stellar quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple History. Its ipod sales set new record. This is a very good set of results considering that Apple had to amortise the revenue and costs over the economic lives for iPhone and Apple TV. To quote Steven Jobs, "Even in these economically challenging times, we are incredibly pleased to report our best quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history—surpassing $10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time ever."
Eversince Apple opened up its iPhone Appstore, Google Android, Blackberry and now Palm have jumped onto the bandwagon. I'm less optimitic about the takeoff for Blackberry Application Centre since most Blackberry users are enterprise users and generally companies have strict policies on what applications can be downloaded onto company handsets. Besides, Blackberry users will not be the right target segment for games and entertainment which are the ones that have the most downloads on Apple Appstore. Google Android is seen as the alternative to iPhone. The difference is that there is only one iPhone maker and that's Apple. Whereas we can expect more Android handsets by various handset makers in the future.
I think Nokia is making a strategic mistake to pump millions of dollars into its music store. No doubt that it's more and more common for people to play music on their cellphones but will people want to pay over $100 for a subscription per year to download unlimited number of songs (with DRM) at this economy? Wired.com recently wrote an article on the 5 ways the cellphones will change how you listen to music (http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/01/six-ways-cellph.html) and I think Nokia should reconsider their business model.
In the past, Microsoft and Blackberry dominated the smartphone segment. Nokia had some success with its E series too but all of these players were only focused on the exchange email synchronisation. What Apple succeeds and Nokia or Motorola fail is to revolutionalise the way people use the phone. The ability for each iPhone user to do "customisation" on his phone by installing apps that he finds useful is a very sticky proposition. Besides, the affordability of the apps only serves to reinforce the value proposition. This is also why Apple delivered an outstanding set of results where others fail. Let's see whether Palm manage to revive its fortune with Palm Pre.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
The Mobile War
Recent Palm Pre launch has created quite a stir. I was once a Palm fan. At that time you could only synchronise your emails by putting the Palm onto the cradle and connecting it to your notebook (oh my, I still remember that I used a Tohsiba Protege then). Then as smartphones took the scene by storm, Palm faded. Sad, but the reality was that the once-upon-a-time innovative company could not stay ahead of the curve. Symbian-based Mobile phones (mainly Nokia), Windows Mobile phones, Blackberry took the lion share of the smartphone devices market until...we all know, Apple iPhone came along.
Apple iPhone didn't immediately target the enterprise users when it was first launched. It targeted the lifestyle users who didn't really care about having their corporate emails on iPhone. That was a smart move. The addressable market for lifestyle users was much bigger and competition was less stiff. If Apple were to target enterprise users from day one, it would be attracting too much attention from Microsoft and Blackberry. It is a much wiser market entry strategy to build up a bigger base of customers by addressing the lifestyle user and leveraging on Apple's strengths in user interface and integrated entertainiment apps and its already big base of iPod fans. With the launch of iPhone 3G, Apple upped the ante with the launch of appstore. It's nothing revolutionary. Yes, you can already buy symbian or windows mobile applications today. But have you wondered why it never really took off in a big way? It never quite reached the tipping point that iPhone created. I'm not sure if the fact that iPhone 2G was jailbroken to allow the installation of third party apps through the Installer (for those who jailbreak your iPhone, you should be quite familiar) had accelerated Apple's plans to launch the appstore but I would say that the strategy of allowing third party to develop apps is definitely one big factor to increase the stickiness. It is definitely a plus point that most of these apps are priced at very affordable prices - at price point that most consumers won't mind paying to try out. Prices can be low because of the the large base of iPhone users worldwide. The phone has evolved to become a very personalised piece of device that is more than just making phone calls or texting someone. With mobile broadband through WiFi or HSPA, I can now run web-based applications with just thin clients on my phone. I can access my computer easily to retrieve files when I'm away from my computer.
So, the trend for mobile is clearly on the apps side. Nokia has its Ovi. Blackberry has its Application Storefront. Google has its Android Appstore. Now Palm is launching an appstore for its Palm Pre. The fight will be on the installed base. The more apps a user installs on his phone, the less likely he's going to switch out to another phone device, especially if there are one or two killer apps that the user must have. The market is now beginning to heat up. Today, most apps are non-enteprise. I can see that as companies become more receptive to cloud computing and web-based applications, mobile enterprise apps will be the next wave. As aptly put across by Gartner, "SaaS adoption is being driven by businesses' pursuit of cost savings and quicker implementations, as well as wider availability of high-speed Internet connections....initial concerns regarding the SaaS applications' security and reliability have faded somewhat as the model has matured"
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Book Summary: The Mckinsey Engagement
It has been a week since my last post. I am savouring the last day of my long break before I report back to work tomorrow. In the past one week, I had the opportunity to catch up with my reading.
If you are interesting in management consulting, you may be interested the book titled "The McKinsey Engagement: A Powerful Toolkit For More Efficient and Effective Team Problem Solving" by Paul N. Friga (http://snipurl.com/9ftfd)
The author uses TEAM FOCUS as the acronyms for the framework discussed in this book. While the contents make sense and will be usefule as reference for team problem solving, I am not sure if this is THE Mckinsey engagement approach. It seems rather generic. I should caveat to say that the author did point out that this book is not endorsed by Mckinsey.
In a nutshell, TEAM FOCUS refers to the following:
T: TALK
E: EVALUATE
A: Assist
M: Motivate
F: Frame
O: Organize
C: Collect
U: Understand
S: Synthesize
I will elaborate a little more on what the author means by each of these acronyms.
Talk (T): communicate constantly, listen attentively and separate issues from people
Evaluate (E): discuss group dynamics, set expectations and monitor results, develop and re-evaluate a personal plan
Assist (A): leverage expertise, keep teammates accountable, provide timely feedback
Motivate (M): identify unique motivators, positively reinformce teammates, celebrate achievements
Frame (F): idenfity the key issues, put into profitability issue tree, business issues, information tree, decision tree, articulate the hypothesis
Organize (O): develop process map, content map, story line
Collect (C)- collect ghost charts, interview guide, interview summary, secondary sources
Understand (U): undestand implications summary , insight -titled chart
Synthesize (S): obtain inputs from various stakeholders and ensure buy in from client and provide a final report
If you read enough of books on Mckinsey, you will remember that a key principle that all consultants must internalise is the MECE (mutually exclusive collectively exhaustive) framework. MECE means that when you break down an issue, you must consider be able to group the various underlying factors into distinct buckets. There must be no overlap of ideas across groupings and all the possible factors must be accounted for in one of the groupings.
If you are more into logic and thinking process, I would recommend you to read the book titled "The Pyramid Principles" by Babara Minto (http://snipurl.com/9fteb). If you read Japanese, you may wish to read the book "ビジネスカの磨き方" and "実戦!問題解決法" by Kenichi Ohmae. I have read almost all the books by Kenichi Ohmae. I first read his book "The Mind of the Strategist" more than 10 years ago. My key takeaway from his recent books is that what's important is the ability to harness your logic thinking skills for problem solving and develop your own thinking style.
Happy New Year!!!
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Cloud Computing. Areas to Look Out For.
In my earlier post, I gave a short review on the Animoto iPhone app. Animoto is a classic example of why cloud computing works best for them. Animoto was first made available on Facebook in April and within a week, the company had to increase the number of servers with Amazon's Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) from 50 to 5,000. To a startup company, it is going to be overly capital intensive to invest in so many servers. Besides, It will also be a hasty decision for the company to buy the servers and is also tough for the company to get the servers running up quickly due to the set up and installation required. An opex model where company only pays for what it uses will be a better business model for a start up like Animoto until it establishes its baseline of usage.
There is a recent good article by Computerworld that talks about cloud computing. I will highlight the key points, coupled with my own views.
1. As illustrated in the Aminoto's case, cloud computing can bring savings to a start up who has yet to establish a usage baseline. Cloud computing also offers scalability and redundancy. One point to note is that it's easier to scale up but the company using cloud services need to be more careful when scaling back as there can be some residual processing resident in the servers that are being switched off and this may cause disruption to the service. The company needs to do the proper clean up first before scaling back.
2. Cloud computing providers need to create different types of pricing models so that it can cater to different needs. For example, the article suggests that for data that has not been accessed in more than 6 months, the provider can move to a slower form of media and charge a lower price for it. The view is that it's not economical to store data in the cloud over a long period of time. Shop around and choose one that best meets the needs but not sacrificing future scalability (we all think big right?!) Check if the company provides detailed billing or audit report for verification, if the need arises.
3. Cloud computing is becoming popular but the performance may not be uniform across various geographies. Getting SLGs from cloud computing provider is important. In my view, it is also equally important to understand the experience of the cloud computing providers. What is their expertise and their main clientele base? What is the customer base's geographical composition? What is the scalability and redundancy plans and where are their data centres. Another important note is to understand their bandwidth upgrade policies.
4. Have back up servers for the mission-critical applications in the event of a service disruption. The idea is not to have your business totally disrupted if there is a complete outage of the cloud. If you can't afford the servers, perhaps you should diversify your requirements across multiple vendors.
5. If you are subscribing to an application provider that is running the application on a cloud, find out whether it is a native 'cloud' application or it is a thick client app that is made to fit into the cloud. If it is the latter, understand what are the restrictions between a 'cloud' app and a thick client version.
Courtesy of Computerworld, the chart below also shows you the potential of IT cloud services are likely to be in the area of collaborative apps, IT Management apps and Personal / Biz Apps. THe survey participants characterised current an future usage - on a scale from 1 (none) to 5 (widespread) - of a variety of IT cloud services within their organization. The chart shows the percentage of respondents toward the higher end (4 or 5) of the usage scale now and / or who will be there in 3 years.
Just in case you are wondering what is cloud computing or what is cloud computing isn't. Computerworld article lists down 4 different styles of cloud computing offerings:
- Software as a Service (SaaS): special-purpose software made available by a third party over the internet with usage-based pricing model e.g. Salesforce.com, Zoho (my own personal view is that SaaS is not cloud computing but rather a form of cloud service).
- Platform as a Service (PaaS): An integrated software environment for whcih systems administrators and developers can build, test and deploy custom applications. E.g. Google Apps Engine
- Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS): A service that providers the core computing resources and network fabric for the cloud deployment e.g. Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud
- Core Cloud Services - standalone components built on cloud platforms that can be woven into cloud applications, such as billing systems management and storage e.g. Microsoft BizTalk, Right Scale.
Here's another article that tells you what cloud computing isn't.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Photoshop.com: Do I like it?
I tried out photoshop.com. Overall, I'm quite happy with the application. The interface is clean and easy to navigate. On the left side bar, you can find your photos or albums and the links to the 4 key sites - Picasa, Facebook, Flickr and Photobucket. You can open and edit the photos that you have saved on these sites within photoshop.com. After you have finished editing, you can click and drag the file into any of 4 sites or choose to download and save it locally on your hard drive. If you choose to download (see the menu bar at the bottom of the screen), you can save in different formats (original size, email/web size or thumbnail size). Making photo edits is simple for novice like me as Photoshop.com provides different selections, showing the range of effects applied on the photo. Generally speaking, Photoshop.com provides more options for photo edits compared to websites like Flickr. You can also choose to put together the photos in a slideshow format or create an album and allow access to friends by emailing them a URL. However, it's also lacking in some features such as geo-tagging and does not accept videos, unlike Picasa or Flickr. In addition, free user has only upto 2Gbp of storage space.
Given the growing popularity of camera phones including iPhone, Photoshop.com should have a mobile site that is accessible via phone. It would be ideal if Photoshop develops a similar app for the iPhone, given that more and more people are using iPhone to snap and upload the photos immediately to their own blogs. In addition, Photoshop.com should also look into linking its site to other mobile photo or social-networking sites (which also means that Photoshop.com should have geo-tagging capability).
If I were running Photoshop.com, I would look into partnerships in the infrastructure layer. Over time, I believe more features will be added to Photoshop.com, including the support for videos and eventually making it into a social networking site. To provide better user experience, Photoshop.com can look into partnering with players which could provide grid/cloud computing and data centre space as well as with handset makers for the mobile site tie-up (if Photoshop.com has a mobile site). Many handphones today are preloaded with applications for access to Facebook or Flickr. In exchange, Photoshop.com provides the eyeballs. To boost its awareness, it may be useful to get a few credible users as evangelists of the product (or perhaps have a twitter account). The site can also be linked to its forum page directly to encourage more interaction and exchange among the users.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Review of Edward de Bono's New Book - Six Frames
I just finished Edward de Bono's new book, Six Frames (http://adjix.com/2tfc)
Six Frames is a set of tools for thinking about Information. These Six Frames are:
1. The Triangle Frame - to layout very clearly your purpose of requiring a piece of information. Is it for a specific need? For your general interest? For confirmation? Edward de Bono says that it's is important to be clear with (1) what is the purpose of this information; (2) why do you need this piece of information; and (3) and where to look for it.
2. The Circle Frame - to review the accuracy of the information as the degree of accuracy will affect the value of the information. Accuracy of the information can be influenced by the following factors: (1) authority - is the source credible?; (2) internal checking - are there inconsistencies in the information? (3) comparative accuracy - counter check the veracity of the information against other sources; (3) adequate accuracy - is the information sufficiently accurate in spite of some minor errors; (4) doubts - this will inevitably limit the accuracy of the information but may not totally eliminate the value of the information.
3. Square Frame - is there any biasness in the information? Are the views balanced or one-sided? Is there other way of looking at the information?
4. Heart Frame - to direct attention to matters that are of interest to you. This could be general interest or special interest due to the work that you are doing.
5. Diamond Frame - what is the value of the information? In this book, Edward de Bono also links the Diamond Frame to his 6 Value Medals
Gold medal: human values and values that apply to people
Silver medal: values that apply to an organisation or entity
Steel medal: values relating to quality
Glass medal: values relating to innovation and creativity
Wood medal: values concerning the environment at large.
Brass medal: perceptual values. How would this be perceived?
6. Slab Frame - this is the final stage where you lay down your conclusions using the information that you have to support the conclusions.
While I think this book is certainly not as interesting and insightful as his previous books, it is nonetheless a useful guide for those who need a quick framework for thinking about information. We also have to be cognizant that not everyone will have the same piece of information and it is possible that with different sets of information, different conclusions may be reached. If the conclusions are vastly different, it may be worthwhile to go back the process once again and to see if we have under-utilised any of the 6 Frames? For example, did we only collect information that only support our hypothesis or did we ignore the doubts cast by the information?
Having filtered the information throught the right framework is not enough. It is equally important that we are able to communicate our thoughts. I would therefore recommend that you consider picking up some books relating to story-telling in an organization setting. Two books that I have read are: What's your story (by Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker) (http://adjix.com/u432) and The Secret Language of Leaders (by Stephen Denning) (http://adjix.com/u2q3).
Hi Card and Animoto iPhone Apps Review. What to improve?
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. May your new year be filled with joy and abundance.
In my previous post (http://snipurl.com/93oxk), I mentioned that HiCard (http://www.hicard.mobi/Default.aspx) would be my favorite iPhone app for the festive season. In the last 24 hours, I have sent out more than 20 HiCards to my friends and more to go out today. I have a few choices of the e-card templates and the HiCard is nicely displayed on the recipient's email. Of course, before I sent out my first Christmas Greeting, I sent one to myself for testing.
While it's a nice little app, I thought there are a few things that the developer can take note of and improve further.
1. I can't save the messages. I like to tweak the message included in the HiCard to add a personal touch. It would be alot more time-saving if I could save the different notes for future use.
2. I can't check my global address book on the server. Unless the email address is stored locally on the iPhone, I can't add the email address directly from the address book.
3. I can't change the font type or size of the card.
4. While I can send the same card to multiple parties by adding all their email addresses, I would lose the personal touch as the recipient can see all the other parties' email addresses
5. It would have been a nice touch if I can insert a photo or picture or change the greeting message on the 'front cover' of the card.
But, despite all these, I think paying $1.99 for the HiCard is worth it. I do hope that the developer will continue to enhance the app and offer free upgrades to early adopters like myself.
The second iPhone app that I wish to talk about here is Animoto (http://animoto.com/) - the popular photo slideshow app that reportedly received overwhleming success when they first launched it as a Facebook Application. In 3 days, the number of users shot up from 25K to 250K (http://snipurl.com/93on6).
I just downloaded the free application from Apple AppStore and tried it out with 10 photos for a 30-sec slideshow (you can select anything between 8 and 16 images). The app also comes with 8 different genres of music and songs and 1 Featured Track for you to select the background music to the slideshow (with nice transition effects). Each genre has more than 10 selections.
The rendering takes several minutes and in the meantime you can play the previous videos that you have made. This is fun for those who want to make their photos into a MTV alike slideshow. What is a total let down is the last mile when you play the video. If you play the video using 3G network, the video will experience significant jitters and latency. What you need to do is probably wait for the buffering to complete and the video will then be loaded automatically. It would be really neat if I can save the video on my iPhone and play it anytime I like without consuming my data bandwidth or have it converted into a RSS feed. But it's free and I have no complains about it. If you want to share with a few more friends, consider using the iPhone composite cable and plug it into a TV and enjoy ( http://snipurl.com/93oum).
Try out and let me know what you think.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
IT players vs Telecoms Players in the SaaS (software as a service) World. What're their business models?
I am not sure how many SaaS aggregators / platform providers today are ready for the ICT world where telecom services and technologies converge.
On the IT world, traditional software players such as Microsoft is also now taking a serious review of their web strategy (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-12/ff_ozzie). Microsoft however believes that in the Web2.0 world, the winning formula is software+services where a client software will be combined with cloud services. There are also purist web-based providers such as Zoho (www.zoho.com) or Google (www.google.com). However, even then, we can't deny the importance of having access to your data or documents even when internet is not available. That's why Google provided Google Gears to allow off-line access. Just like we have seen in the mobile world where the game is no longer just about the phone hardware, but also the applications. We have seen increasingly web-based applications providers developing their own marketplace.
Broadsoft, a leading VoIP platform provider, has launched its own marketplace of applications (http://marketplace.broadsoft.com/). Salesforce.com for example has a marketplace called AppExchange ( http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/ ) that allows salesforce.com users to find and test drive and subscribe to third party applications that can be integrated into salesforce.com application. The benefit to a Salesforce.com customer is that he can enjoy a single sign-on (meaning using the same set of username and password for salesforce.com application, he can run access the other third party apps onboarded onto the AppExchange). System Integrators such as NEC also has its own SaaS solutions (http://www.applicationsnet.com/Solutions/SoftwareNet/FeaturedApplications__65.aspx). The benefit of a SaaS provider having its own marketplace of third party apps is that the SaaS provider can integrate the third party apps into its own application to offer mashups or data collaboration.
On the telecoms world, we see that telecoms providers are also making an attempt to be a PaaS (Platform-as-a-service) provider, targeting at the SMB segment. Unlike SaaS provider, PaaS provider does not develop the applications. PaaS provider works more like a SaaS aggregator, collaborating with different applications providers to provide the services through a unified platform.
Swisscom (http://labs.swisscom-mobile.ch/welcome.jsf) has a beta labs to offer web-based applications on a beta basis (the last time I checked, they collaborated with Zoho as well. Seems that this did not work out). Telstra has recently announced the launch of T-suite SaaS platform in November. ZDNet.com.au had done some testing and their first impression was that while the platform shows great promise (which probably is a nice way to say that T-suite is not exactly ready yet), there were many bugs that yet to be resolved (and I quote MANY). But then again, since Telstra T-suite is in beta mode, users should not complain (smart move by Telstra) and since it's in beta mode, users should not expect the same level of customer support, if provided. BT is probably more matured in the PaaS space than the other telecoms provider but too bad it seems a little hard to find the online SaaS portal on its website (http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/btbusinessProducts/displayCategory.do?categoryId=BTB-HOSTED-SOFTWARE-I). To give BT the credit, it has done alot more than just be an aggregator of services. BT also offers BT Tradespace, an online business directory and community site primarily for SMBs.
As a PaaS provider, a telco player needs to work with different partners to onboard the service. The value proposition that a telecoms player brings is the single sign-on, single billing, single point of contact (at least for the first level support and the telco providers need to have a back to back arrangement with the various applications providers on the level 2 and 3 support), and an integrated bundle (telecoms + software). In addition, customers do not need to provide credit card details as the payment will be in a post-paid mode that can be included in the existing bills.
Telecoms players have the advantage of knowing their customers as many of them have existing billing relationships with the service provider in one form or another. In addition, telecoms players are able to offer 'mass-customisation' of a bundle service to meet different requirements. For example, for a $200/month package, customer is able to choose his preferred combination in terms of its broadband speed and application that best meets its needs.
SMBs generally have a deeper trust with their telecoms services providers than the smaller, independent web-based vendors. This gives an edge to the telecoms players. But if that's so great, why aren't the telecoms players jumping onto the bandwagon? My take is that they eventually will. We have to realise that telecoms providers have complex billing systems and order management and provisioning systems. Providing the front end (shop front) is probably the least of the challenge compared to integrating PaaS with the exsiting customer database and the order/billing systems sitting at the backend and to know when customers subscribe/terminate or renew/upgrade. The challenge is compounded if you include the traditional telecoms services onto the platform to be offered on-demand basis. To date, no telecoms player has proven the capability to offer traditional telecoms services such as broadband and software as a service on demand basis.
Another challenge is the onboarding process. Most of the web-based players are offering the SaaS directly from their website. APIs may be provided but tweaking and adaptation is required to ensure excellent customer experience. For example, a telecoms provider will develop its own e-shop that shows its own catalogue of services and applications. The telecoms provider decides on the end user subscription bundles to be offered to the market. The customer is likely to find it confusing if the apps provider which is onboarded onto the telecoms provider's platform does not mask out its own support helpdesk or subscription packages (which may very likely be in credit card payment mode and may vary from the telecoms provider as the telecoms provider may package it differently or bundled it with its own telecoms services). Beyond the initial onboarding phase, as a PaaS provider, it will help to increase customer stickiness if you are able to facilitate ease of data export/import across multiple applications. However, if the telecoms player manages to crack this part of the equation, it will be a strong contender and my take is that they will win the war in the ICT era.
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More about T-Suite
http://www.telstrabusiness.com/business/portal/online/site/productsservices/tsuiteapplications.52025
T-suite launched in beta mode in early November with hosted versions of Microsoft's Outlook/Exchange (messaging), Dynamics (CRM) and Sharepoint (collaboration tools) McAfee's desktop security, MessageLabs network security products and Telstra's own PC and server back-up products.
ZDNet Australia has done a very good review.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/software/soa/Telstra-s-T-Suite-First-look/0,139023769,3392935500.htm
More about NEC Aggregated SaaS Solution-in-a-Box
Globally organisations are shifting to rent applications, instead of outright purchase. A simple integrated model to purchase, manage and maintain SaaS ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) is essential to manage the ever growing SaaS landscape. The NEC Software Net platform uses an efficient, collaborative, user-centric and context aware Service platform to provide a simple and flexible network based application framework to achieve this. In addition, NEC has licensed leading application solution providers in the on-demand or SaaS space; this means that Software Net end users gain access to multiple best in class software application solutions all through one collaborative portal environment.
More about Broadsoft Xtended Marketplace
BroadSoft Xtended Marketplace is where you will find the latest Web 2.0 applications integrated with the world's leading voice over IP platform. Explore the Xtended Marketplace to find mashups with popular business solutions and social networking websites.
Friday, December 19, 2008
{UPDATED} How to Monetize Twitter? Here's what I think the new Twitter Product Manager can do
It's interesting to see that Twitter is now trying to monetize its popularity. This is nothing groundbreaking. Yammer, for example, is one that uses twitter kind of messaging system as an internal communications tool. Of course, to give credit to the company, Yammer has a different UI and implemented other features that have yet to be done on Twitter. ( http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/yammer-launches-at-tc50-twitter-for-companies/#comments ). Whether Yammer can take off, it the jury is still out. About this Job As Twitter's first product manager focused on revenue generation, you will play a defining role in the formulation of Twitter's business. Your job will be to lead the definition and execution of the products and features that will lead to monetization of the Twitter platform. I've subscribed to Yammer but I didn't post any messages. It's just an idle account; Twitter on the other hand is very much close to my heart. Why so, I have asked myself. I think this lies in the culture of the company and the job nature of the user. There are only less than 10 Yammer users in my company. Most of us have smartphones and can check our emails anywhere anytime. I can't use Yammer to broadcast as my job revolves around strategic planning and budgets as well as go to market plans on our new initiatives. I deal alot with senior management and they are not on Yammer (in fact, I doubt they have heard about Twitter either). As a matter of fact, sending SMS is much faster and quicker if you want a more immediate response (at least that's what I experience). Sounds sad, but all is not lost. Does that mean there is no viability at this stage? To the contrary, I think there is. Back to what I think Twitter can do. This is by no means an exhaustive list or a detailed analysis. It's something that I thought of based on my work experience. Perhaps this list can be used for further brainstorming by Twitter or for people who are keen to be Twitter's first product manager. 1. Twitter can be a new form of viral marketing tool for companies to try out. First understand your base first. What's the profile of your customers? Active base vs inactive. How many new twitter accounts are created on average per month or week for example. What is the size of the base in different geographical locations? 2. Have a ready educational / sales kit. Twitter is new. Show them the benefits. My first targets would probably be those companies who already have their own employee blogs, forums or live online customer care or truly care about customer experience or educational institutions which are into e-learning. 3. Get one or two success stories first (even if it's not money-making). You need success stories to build credibility and momentum. 4. Decide on the types of packages / solutions for the target markets. Yammer is in a pretty niche area. I do not think it's wise to restrict the business model to usin g corporate emails. It should be an option but not mandatory. SMEs may not have corporate emails. They may rely on the good old free emails by Yahoo or Gmail or Hotmail. 5. If you still want to gun for the big accounts, just take note that big enterprises usually have strict policies on adoption of technologies. It will take quite a while before the company endorses such technologies. If you want to try out, always try to talk to the "innovation" department if the company has one and convince then to implement this as a trial. Or to the media department. Sell to the users the benefits. Then meet the IS. Tell them not only the ease of policing and cost savings, but also the benefits to the company. 6. Scalability is important. I think unless you are already pretty established, it will not make sense to charge by per user account for large corporation. You may want to work out a different pricing scheme. 7. Security and Audit trail. This can be important if this is to be used as part of a corporate tool especially for bigger enterprises. I'm not sure how easy it is to implement twitter with security features or with audit trail but these are things that Twitter has to think through if it wants to work with big corporations. 8. SME is a big untapped market. They can be the early adopters. Help SMEs to learn how to incorporate twitter into their websites and how to integrate with their CMS to do content broadcast for their followers. Or work with web-based services targeting at SMEs to see how to integrate twitter into the services. For example, SME may use an online project room and when an update is done, an automessage can be sent out to the relevant parties as Direct Messages. This also means that Twitter must have an easy way for "guest" use instead of making it mandatory for everyone who wants to use the service to have to register and sign up. 9. Work with online communities websites to be the "enabler" for these communities websites. Have some capability built into Twitter that can do online polls or surveys. Have ready plugins that can be included easily into applications especially productivity tools like Outlook or Powerpoints. For example, if I made revision to a shared document, I can easily send an auto-message to my counterparts. Or complement an email marketing tool. 10. Work with handset makers or even telco companies to have the twitter app made available on the phones either as a java applet or iphone app or blackberry app or see how to integrate it even more tightly into their services. However, you may want to think through if you want to work with them if they insist on rebranding or co-branding. Shozu (www.shozu.com) for example is made available on many handsets and have tie ups with some telco companies. {NEW} 11. SMS is still the predominant application used on mobile phones. Twitter should still proactively engage with the telco operators to encourage the people to use Twitter. To take it a step further. Most telco operators have an ISP arm and have email hosting. Work with them to offer a bundled email-cum-twitter account which can have different features depending on whether this is offered to end consumers or business customers. Show them how stickiness can be achieved. For example, the twitter service can be integrated into the calendaring feature and a reminder tweet can be sent out to all the invitees for the upcoming appointment or a reminder tweet on the scheduled IM conference. Alternatively, if an online listing service is also provided as a community space for the SME customers to post their goods and services, the same twitter account can be linked to payment gateway. This involves some work at the API level but it's worthwhile to think about it. Twitter service can be further expanded to work with companies such as airline companies to send out tweets to inform users about the flight schedule status. 12. We all talk about digital home and the all-in-one box that sits in the living room that helps to control the room aircon, turn on the TV set, switch off the music player. How about working with the partners to offer a twitter service that can be used as a way for users to send a tweet that acts as an instruction to remotely control these? 13. Create some incentives for referrals. And constantly rollout new or improved features. Be open and transparent to feedback.
14. Have different pricing models. Can be a subscription model, capped plan, pay per use, etc.
15. Once you have a big enough mass market, you can even offer to do "twitter-broadcasting" much like SMS-broadcasting.
16. Another potential area is advertising. Something similar to location-based advertising. You walk into a mall and a promotional code is pushed to your twitter account. Well, Twitter probably needs to work with some key retailers to agree to adopt the Twitter platform first so that they can get their regular customer base to sign up to create the viral marketing effect. If you are interested to discuss more, leave me a comment or send me a tweet @poohwinn I just came across the interview by Twitter CEO. Check out here. ================================
Responsibilities
Qualifications
Bonus Points
Working at TwitterTwitter offers competitive salaries and full benefits, including health, dental, vacation, 401k, and stock options. We work in a bright, sunny office in San Francisco. And you'll be joining a unique group of experienced folks who are doing their best work to create something great.
Accessing Web-based Microsoft Exchange Emails
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Wednesday, December 17, 2008
iPhoto2gmail Plugin is a Great Productivity Tool for Photo Blogging
Introducing the iPhoto2Gmail plugin (http://iphoto2gmail.notoptimal.net/ ).
This niffty app just reduces my time taken to upload dozons of photos onto my blog by more than half. In the past, I had to resize all my photos and upload them one by one to posterous using my Gmail account. There were also frequent encounters where my Gmail would be in a "still working" mode after a good 20 minutes and the 30 photos were still left humming in email.
Using this iPhoto2Gmail app, I can just resize it with one click and immediately it will be sent to my Gmail account, ready for uploading. Wish there is a similar plug in for iPhone so that I can email multiple photos at once. By the way, they have the Apperture2Gmail app too.
How to Monetize Twitter? Here's what I think the new Twitter Product Manager can do
It's interesting to see that Twitter is now trying to monetize its popularity. This is nothing groundbreaking. Yammer, for example, is one that uses twitter kind of messaging system as an internal communications tool. Of course, to give credit to the company, Yammer has a different UI and implemented other features that have yet to be done on Twitter. ( http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/yammer-launches-at-tc50-twitter-for-companies/#comments ). Whether Yammer can take off, it the jury is still out.
I've subscribed to Yammer but I didn't post any messages. It's just an idle account; Twitter on the other hand is very much close to my heart. Why so, I have asked myself. I think this lies in the culture of the company and the job nature of the user. There are only less than 10 Yammer users in my company. Most of us have smartphones and can check our emails anywhere anytime. I can't use Yammer to broadcast as my job revolves around strategic planning and budgets as well as go to market plans on our new initiatives. I deal alot with senior management and they are not on Yammer (in fact, I doubt they have heard about Twitter either). As a matter of fact, sending SMS is much faster and quicker if you want a more immediate response (at least that's what I experience). Sounds sad, but all is not lost. Does that mean there is no viability at this stage? To the contrary, I think there is.
Back to what I think Twitter can do. This is by no means an exhaustive list or a detailed analysis. It's something that I thought of based on my work experience. Perhaps this list can be used for further brainstorming by Twitter or for people who are keen to be Twitter's first product manager.
1. Twitter can be a new form of viral marketing tool for companies to try out. First understand your base first. What's the profile of your customers? Active base vs inactive. How many new twitter accounts are created on average per month or week for example. What is the size of the base in different geographical locations?
2. Have a ready educational / sales kit. Twitter is new. Show them the benefits. My first targets would probably be those companies who already have their own employee blogs, forums or live online customer care or truly care about customer experience or educational institutions which are into e-learning.
3. Get one or two success stories first (even if it's not money-making). You need success stories to build credibility and momentum.
4. Decide on the types of packages / solutions for the target markets. Yammer is in a pretty niche area. I do not think it's wise to restrict the business model to using corporate emails. It should be an option but not mandatory. SMEs may not have corporate emails. They may rely on the good old free emails by Yahoo or Gmail or Hotmail.
5. If you still want to gun for the big accounts, just take note that big enterprises usually have strict policies on adoption of technologies. It will take quite a while before the company endorses such technologies. If you want to try out, always try to talk to the "innovation" department if the company has one and convince then to implement this as a trial. Or to the media department. Sell to the users the benefits. Then meet the IS. Tell them not only the ease of policing and cost savings, but also the benefits to the company.
6. Scalability is important. I think unless you are already pretty established, it will not make sense to charge by per user account for large corporation. You may want to work out a different pricing scheme.
7. Security and Audit trail. This can be important if this is to be used as part of a corporate tool especially for bigger enterprises. I'm not sure how easy it is to implement twitter with security features or with audit trail but these are things that Twitter has to think through if it wants to work with big corporations.
8. SME is a big untapped market. They can be the early adopters. Help SMEs to learn how to incorporate twitter into their websites and how to integrate with their CMS to do content broadcast for their followers. Or work with web-based services targeting at SMEs to see how to integrate twitter into the services. For example, SME may use an online project room and when an update is done, an automessage can be sent out to the relevant parties as Direct Messages. This also means that Twitter must have an easy way for "guest" use instead of making it mandatory for everyone who wants to use the service to have to register and sign up.
9. Work with online communities websites to be the "enabler" for these communities websites. Have some capability built into Twitter that can do online polls or surveys. Have ready plugins that can be included easily into applications especially productivity tools like Outlook or Powerpoints. For example, if I made revision to a shared document, I can easily send an auto-message to my counterparts. Or complement an email marketing tool.
10. Work with handset makers or even telco companies to have the twitter app made available on the phones either as a java applet or iphone app or blackberry app or see how to integrate it even more tightly into their services. However, you may want to think through if you want to work with them if they insist on rebranding or co-branding. Shozu (www.shozu.com) for example is made available on many handsets and have tie ups with some telco companies.
11. Create some incentives for referrals. And constantly rollout new or improved features. Be open and transparent to feedback.
12. Have different pricing models. Can be a subscription model, capped plan, pay per use, etc.
13. Once you have a big enough mass market, you can even offer to do "twitter-broadcasting" much like SMS-broadcasting.
14. Another potential area is advertising. Something similar to location-based advertising. You walk into a mall and a promotional code is pushed to your twitter account. Well, Twitter probably needs to work with some key retailers to agree to adopt the Twitter platform first so that they can get their regular customer base to sign up to create the viral marketing effect.
If you are interested to discuss more, leave me a comment or send me a tweet @poohwinn
================================
About this Job
As Twitter's first product manager focused on revenue generation, you will play a defining role in the formulation of Twitter's business. Your job will be to lead the definition and execution of the products and features that will lead to monetization of the Twitter platform.
Responsibilities
- Define products and feature sets of commercial-oriented Twitter applications
- Manage the prioritization and development of new products and features
- Work closely with engineering to develop product functionality
- Work closely with customer support to solve issues and maximize user satisfaction
- Do customer research to inform product decisions
- Create detailed cost and revenue models
- Define product positioning and marketing plans
- Analyze and report product success
Qualifications
- Experience managing web-based software products
- Strong familiarity with online advertising and marketing models
- Strong grasp of user-experience design
- Enthusiasm for talking to customers
- Great project-management skills
- Excellent written communication and presentation skills
- Active Twitter user
Bonus Points
- Strong technical and data-mining skills
Working at Twitter
Twitter offers competitive salaries and full benefits, including health, dental, vacation, 401k, and stock options. We work in a bright, sunny office in San Francisco. And you'll be joining a unique group of experienced folks who are doing their best work to create something great.
Compare Camera Quality of all 8MP Camera Phones - here's the verdict.
I thought pictures speak a thousand words and it may be useful for you to have some reference on the quality of the photos produced by the various 8MP camera phones.
If you are interested in the unedited image qualities of the 8MP camera phones, please take a look at the pictures below. Just to orientate you. All pictures are taken at 2MP with the exception of Sony Ecrisson C905. Images of C905 were taken at 3MP as there was no 2MP selection.
I have tested on all the current 8MP camera phones. The pictures are in the following order (remember it's a set of 4 photos for each phone)
1. Samsung Innov8 (with sliding keypad),
2. Sony Ecricsson C905 (with sliding keypad)
3. Samsung Pixon (touch screen)
4. LG Renoir (touch screen).
For each phone, there is a set of 4 photos. The first two photos (using auto-focus and macro functions respectively) were taken with all lights switched off. This was to test the quality of the pictures with the flash. The last two pictures (again, using auto-focus and macro functions) were taken when the (incandescent) lights were switch on and the white balance was set to auto. All photos were not edited.
Hope this provide some use to you.
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