A Dime a Dozen Small Business, Tech and Talk

One place where the changes will be particularly sweeping is the corporate IT department. As the capacity and capabilities of the computing grid expand, it will continue to displace private systems as the preferred platform for computing. Businesses will gain new flexibility in assembling computing services to perform customised information-processing jobs. They will no longer be constrained by the limits of their own data centres or the dictates of a few big IT vendors.

A digital Business piece by Nicholas Carr published by the Financial Times. It definitely will be a sea change for IT, but an opportunity for business of all sizes. Reducing CapEx costs of buying hardware. Licences, and expertise will become unnecessary. Your “footprint” on the web can be the same regardless of company size.

The Computing Cloud is coming, With Microsoft and consumers leading the charge. In an interview with Microsoft’s Robbie Bach, head of Microsoft’s Entertainment Division, Automotive News (subscription required) Mr. Bach is quoted as saying the automobile will be part of the network. The technology in Microsoft’s Sync platform (currently available on several Ford Motor vehicles) allows voice activated control of cellular phones, Apple Corp’s. iPod etc. Ultimately, GPS, Navigation, your phone, your music will all be voice activated and available through your in car system.

Once we get get comfy with that - what is to stop me demanding that my corporate voice mail or email be accessible from that same platform?

I get off the plane into my car (even a rental) and have the car start reading my messages for me, and initiating the call for those I have to get back to. With the car connected to network, as a movable room or office, you don’t care where that data is coming from, you access it from wherever, and whenever you are.

The technology bits and pieces are already pretty much there - if the demand comes, (and I am sure it will) the result will be interesting.

January 24 2008

As a Technology Manager in the SMB space - I have been welcoming the larger telecommunications providers, as well as various service providers and vendors for reaching out to the small / medium business space. It seems companies from Microsoft to IBM finally realize that there are some companies around that don’t fit the Global 2000 model.

In fact, a 2007 report states that 49 per cent of private sector employment in Canada as a whole was supplied by small business. Granted, it is more difficult and with more pressure on SG&A expenses to sign many small deals than one large one, but the market is here.

I use a larger Canadian services organization for a raft of products that include wireless services, voice services, data services, Wide Area Network (WAN) security and managed services, and even data center hosting services.

I still have one problem though, every one of those services is a different contract with a different division, with different contact number and email address. None of those services “knows” me as a customer of the other services.

There is a huge waste of my time for sure, but do you think I am wasting dollars of your time too? speaking with 5 different people in five different places?

I think so.

January 23 2008

This is a reprise of a comment I wrote on a personal (now defunct) web site many years ago. I resurrected it because there was another article published in Baseline Magazine on a topic that just refuses to die. The Recording Industry Association of America finally won a lawsuit against an individual in 2007 for illegally downloading copyrighted music.

Plain and simple, the RIAA blew their digital music chance and are trying to close the gates after the horses have all left the barn. I am sure the RIAA will be the topic of business school courses for the next hundred years, but here is one more take on it.

Back when the digitization of audio (including music) became easy and simple there were interviews and articles with recording industry executives who said that the industry would be reviewing these technologies, and that when they found a way to get soup to nuts intellectual property security around the entire digitization process (read - how to keep the dollars in their own hands) they would determine how the business “model” would work. (to favour the RIAA of course)

At the time, I thought that it was not the brightest move to make. Sure enough fairly soon a kid named Shawn Fanning let the proverbial digital cat out of the copyright bag with Napster (now a trademark of Roxio). Napster allowed easy access to down loadable music - without much thought given to the copyright owner of that music.

Fast forward a few years and Apple Corporations iTunes is making buckets of money selling down loadable digital music for which the RIAA gets a small royalty payment.

The RIAA fell into what I call the “Long Jump” view of technological and business innovation; Namely, try to predict the future, then take a huge leap for that glimpse of future - hoping that you get every technological, legal, consumer, and other ducks all in the perfect row - then land on that perfect future track to a standing ovation and a new world record.

Sorry ladies and gentlemen - it doesn’t work that way any more. While you are in that long jump, the world turns beneath you and you miss every duck, and miss the track as well.

So, in this long jump for intellectual property perfection, what the RIAA actually got was alternative methods of free downloading, then paid methods of downloading owned by someone else! They may actually have become marginalized in their own industry. So much for the standing ovation and new world record.

What the RIAA should have done was to learn how to dance. Rather than taking a huge leap with unknown (and unknowable) outcomes, take a small step, pause - review what has changed, the risks, and the next possible step, then step again.

There was no perfect technology for their problem (there may never be!) but other industries were already working their way through that. For example, there was already an existing digital play book available . Companies like McAfee and Norton both made millions in that time frame allowing use of their commercial products through what was called “trial ware” (or more cynically “nag ware”). If you had a PC in the Mid to late ’90’s you probably had one of their Anti-Virus products on it. The premise was simple - let people download it, try it, the software would “nag” you regularly to pay for it, you pay for it and the nagging goes away.

These companies had already identified that the majority of consumers will pay for a product if there is a legal way to do so. Apples iTunes of course has proven it again. Sure, a minority will continue to try and “hack” in and steal any product, but if legal alternatives exist, the majority of us will go the legal route.

So the RIAA dance could have looked like this; The RIAA invents a music download tool - no Napster needed!. However when you download and play the song, the beginning, middle and end has cut outs that overlays the “Please Buy This Product” message. You pay for it, the nag goes away. You share it to someone else, and because they don’t have the license, the “nag” returns. Then we pause and see the next steps, as the technology matures and evolves, maybe the next step is the RIAA A-Tunes rather than Apples iTunes, and Pause. And Step, maybe it is the RIAA’s streaming media subscription web site “personal radio station” that we are listening to, and Pause. And Step, how about the RIAA being the negotiator with Smart Phone manufacturers for those music clips being downloaded to every possible device.

None of which will happen now of course - that all happened without them as they were hurtling through their Long Jump.

My family is going through a difficult time right now. My Mother - in - Law has been quite ill for a significant period of time. The family has been rattling trees and shaking bushes to find a physician to provide a second opinion.

In the SMB technology space - you are also probably relying on some organization that provides you technical services on their opinion. In some cases they seem to try and up sell, cross sell, or just generally try to separate you from more money every time you talk to them.

As with the physician, don’t be afraid to get a second opinion

January 21 2008

Why doesn’t Microsoft make software programs any more?

Purchasing larger enterprise class software tools for an organization is expensive. As a percent of revenues it always seems to be an insurmountable cost for smaller organizations. By “enterprise” software I mean software tools that go beyond basic productivity software like word processing and spreadsheets, these tools assist in enhancing collaboration, improving knowledge management, or streamlining processes.

Of course, you mention software, and Microsoft is automatically the 800 pound gorilla in the room, we all know that Microsoft Office is the de-facto office productivity software. But Microsoft also has an extensive suite of enterprise style tools, including Project Server, Sharepoint Portal Server, Visual Studio Team System and others.

While there are many alternative commercial products, or open source tools that can perform many of the same tasks, you sacrifice the tight integration and rich interaction that Microsoft provides in its software suites. Not to mention the training and management issues of that type of migration for smaller organizations.

And That is my problem, all of these tools are software “suites”, they are no longer software “programs” that you can install and use. Each of these suites has so many dependencies on other pieces of Microsoft Software that you cannot even install them without upgrading all of the pieces first.

Here is an example; To assist our software development team I was looking at a tool such as Visual Studio Team System, the server price and the client access license (CAL) price is at least reasonably priced. Then you look deeper - The software won’t work at all with my version of Windows Server, so we have to add in a Windows Server upgrade price and server CAL’s. Next - oh it won’t work with my version of MS SQL Server, Lets add in MS SQL Server upgrade price with CAL’s. So the “reasonable” price has now mushroomed into a price that I can no longer afford.

I wonder if I can find a hosted model of this yet? Let them worry about all the other infrastructure upgrades required to get it working.

January 18 2008

An eWeek article by Renee Boucher Ferguson here, led me to investigate Salesforce.com’s new “platform as a service” offering. Salesforce.com is the business that proved to organizations of all sizes that the rented “software as a service” (Saas) concept was a valid option for software. No more buying expensive software licenses, maintaining application servers, database servers or operating systems, just pay a subscription and access the application “on demand” from anywhere.

This offering takes the next step, whereas the SaaS model has been a model of You renting Their software in Their environment, the platform as a service model is of You writing Your own software, all within their multi-tenant environment. The force.com environment extends the SaaS model to any application you wish to build - all on their infrastructure stack. No servers, databases or other infrastructure to maintain.

Using their API’s and Metadata API’s according to the company, when developers create Meta Data elements, their work is captured as a Meta Data “blueprint” which force.com automatically translates into the full applications.

Much has been written, on this site as well as the business and technology press regarding the future if IT both as an industry, and as a business. This “cloud computing” offering is an active demonstration of the changes that will take place in our organizations.

On the one hand, the ability to have a software application built and managed over the Internet affects business as the there is no infrastructure to maintain which can reduce costs - for people in the IT field that maintain these infrastructures, well, that means having to move up the food chain to higher level services.

On the other hand - this also becomes an opportunity, I want a software program to do a particular task, Can I pay you to build it for me?

January 17 2008
Congratulations! you have just reached the stage in your business where you are looking at an “Enterprise” class software tool for some portion of your organization. You have found that sticky notes, Microsoft Excel and plain old E-Mail are not cutting it any more.

You are looking for a tool that will reduce the amount of time that some piece of work or process takes, maybe you want to increase customer satisfaction, possibly even just track sales or service processes more efficiently because you have a huge mass of receivables greater than 90 days, most of which is because the invoice only went out 15 days ago. (It takes time to sort those shipping things out right?)

So you take the plunge looking for some tool that can help speed up the “Call to Cash” cycle and improve your cash flow, the bottom line, and hopefully make coffee in the morning. Maybe you really do not care if you have to run this program yourself, or pay a subscription fee and run it from someone else’s computer servers, in other words, Software as a Service (Saas)

However, while you are signing the cheque, consider this; When moving to a software tool designed to improve or support a part of your business, that software and its vendor makes the critical assumption that you have optimized your internal processes, or are planning to optimize them. Of course, your sales representative may have forgotten to mention it, or at least just tied it into a 15 minute long “operational efficiency” spiel that left your eyes glazed over.

In general it does not matter which process or which tool, this assumption can be the one thing that makes or breaks what you are trying to do. Failure in looking at how you perform these tasks can either make your software tool fail completely, or be so twisted out of shape that many of the benefits you hoped for will just never happen.

Here is a real world example (this example will demonstrate a “process” as well, we can call it the “Service Process”). A number of years ago I assisted an organization that serviced a particular type of machinery. This machinery was located all over North America, some of it was under warranty, some under various levels of maintenance service contract, and some was just time and materials billing.

The organization had grown steadily and here was the service Process in the “way we always do it around here”.

1) A customer called for service, contact information and other details were captured by someone on a standard telephone message slip.

2) The message slip was then pinned to a cork message board and eventually taken by a second person who looked up billing and maintenance contract details - if details were missing or needed clarification, return phone calls would be made.

3) The message slip then went back to the cork message board to be picked up by a third person who looked up available service representatives in the customers region and then passed on the service call information.

4) The service representative performed the service, then on a weekly basis sent service slips back to head office via courier. These service slips included parts used, time spent etc.

5) The service slips would then be compared to the machines warranty, contract or billing status for an invoice to be sent, parts inventory updated, etc.

In this service process, at least 4 individuals have touched the service call for various lengths of time (time X salary) with no revenue. Invoicing and inventory control is not even possible until the slips are in and validated, affecting inventory costs, stock-outs, as well as the billing and receivables.

Now, the software tool that this organization wanted to implement would do the following; (this would be the “new” service process)

1) A customer calls for service, the contact information automatically pulls all warranty, maintenance contracts or other billing material from a central database. The database presents all service representatives in that region and shows if they are already engaged on a job site or free for the service call. The free service representative gets assigned the call and is automatically notified electronically via e-mail to a cellular phone or PDA type device.

2) The service representative completes the service, and via any web browser updates the electronic service slip - including parts used, time worked etc. (backup old paper slips can still be sent weekly)

3) When the electronic service slip is completed, parts inventory is updated - invoice or warranty paperwork is generated automatically, and is ready to print and mail.

So this new process removed excess non-revenue generating touch points, improved customer satisfaction by getting service on site faster, alerted the organization of inventory issues, and has the invoice ready to go before the service representative is even out of the building!

The concept of this type of “process improvement” can seem simple, to see the benefit when written down like this seems to make sense. But unless you realize that this assumption is there - the “we always did it this way” beast will likely knock it off track.

In the above example - need you ask? the organization mentioned above wanted the “new” software tool, not to implement the “new service process” - only to automate the “old” service process! In other words the only tangible benefit that the software would provide would be to replace the standard telephone message slip with an electronic message slip! There would still be the same 4 individuals manually looking for contract information, or service representative availability, etc.

Trying to automate a broken process in this way will have a negative impact on cost justifying this type of tool purchase. The benefit of optimizing a process is taking the hard look at the “way we always do it around here” and seeing where that “way we do it” can be changed to reduce time, reduce non revenue generating work, and speed up results.

So before you sign that cheque, have you already looked at the “way we always do it around here” beast? Or are you willing and able to look at it? If not, you might be better off just buying more telephone message slips.

Timing is everything - I missed this earlier. An interview with Nicholas Carr by CIO Insight columnist Edward Cone on “Why IT Will Change”. The interview repeats the concept of computing resources moving into the “cloud” where your sharing of information, or access to information is faster, easier and more flexible by plugging into the IT utility grid.

Mr. Carr even makes the comment that he would be surprised “..if …20 years from now there are still IT departments in corporations”. This completely continues the network as the computer model model Mr. Carr and others have written about. I have not yet read Mr. Carr’s new book, but he mentions extensively businesses moving from generating their own electrical power, to simply and cheaply plugging into the electrical grid of your local utility. So he probably also mentions that when electricity (even the light bulb) were first commercialized, you needed to have on staff, an on site electrician - just to keep a new, often flaky technology up and running. Now of course, the if there is a power problem, we just call an electrician.

IT has been moving from this phase - the white jacket keepers of the IT kingdom have given way to plugging in a network jack. The next level in this “low level” IT work will be the same as calling that electrician, you only call when there is a problem.

That is not to say that the “electrician” IT worker trade will disappear, but it will be moved out of the business to the same place in the local phone directory we look for that electrician or plumber.

The business, or corporate IT worker that remains will have to become part relationship manager, part negotiator, and have a deeper understanding of the relationships among the data, the processes and the individuals that use it. As an example, as a business owner or manager, do you care what type of computer your particular tool resides on? do you care about the operating system? That should be just as invisible as the wires and boxes in your electrical closet. What you do care about is that a particular piece of customer information that is updated provides the right information, to the right people, at the right time. Regardless of where those people are, or what tool those people are using. The business IT worker will be the process expert, or data steward that makes sure that these relationships are available and met.

In my own organization, we are a small step towards that goal. I have a minimal “data center” holding our corporate applications and servers. These need to be available all the time, so I have them all hosted with a managed service provider in a massive data center that can take better and faster care of that “electrical” work than I can! - I don’t even have a clue what those machines look like!

January 15 2008

Technical Industry visionary Nicholas Carr has an article referencing several other posts, plus his new book predicting that 2008 is the year that Software as a service has its break out year.

Full disclosure, I have been a fan of Mr. Carr’s since his publication of “IT Doesn’t Matter” in the May 2003 Harvard Business Review. (subscription required)

The concept is simple, just as we plug an extension cord into the wall to get electricity, the time is coming were we just plug something into the wall and get computing resources. It may be a subscription to that particular financial program you need, or data storage for those marketing brochures.

NASA Vs. The Automobile

Even as a “tech guy” I have believed in this concept for years. My epiphany came 12 or 15 years ago when an automotive industry trade magazine (I don’t remember which one to give it credit) mentioned that every automobile manufactured in North America since about 1980 had more computer processing power than the NASA moon shots. I found that fundamentally amazing. Made me realize how “seat of the pants” those flights were!

At the same time, I realized that no one buys an automobile because of the computer processing power installed in it, modern cars can have dozens of “computer chips” choreographing everything from engine management to antilock brakes. We purchase automobiles that meet some set of needs that we, as individuals have. These reasons could be design, features, our life style, or price. The computer technology available in the automotive world can definitely enable and enhance many of the features that make us choose a particular automobile. But unless you are an engineer in the auto industry,(OK maybe that was a bad joke) I don’t think any of us purchase a particular make or model of vehicle because it has a certain number of computer circuits installed in it.

Two lawyers walk into a bar, first lawyer says; “I just bought a new car! 35 integrated computer chips .. beat that!”

X-Box Wins - For Now

We are already seeing many pieces of this invisible IT network utility structure. For example, my son is a Microsoft X-Box live fan. He takes it for granted that he can fire up the machine, it connects to the Internet in seconds and he is blowing up aliens while instantly talking on headphones to the contacts on his friend list. That list includes someone half way around the world. As an IT manager - I wish I could do that today with voice and video communications! My organization has staff spread across Canada, to get the same funcionality that he does with the X-Box, I have to set up a web based meeting tool and then setup (and pay for) a phone conference with an 800 number for the remote team to call. In the time it takes me to do this - my son and his buddy list have reached level 5 of whichever game they are playing. Can we say “collaboration”?