More change


If you haven’t heard, Google has now launched it own phone called the Nexus One. You can read more about it at “Google launches Nexus One ‘superphone’” and read an online review from Endgadget. Interestingly, Google is offering this phone directly to customers via its web site, which means you can just buy the handset and insert just about any carrier’s SIM. This is certainly a big change from the way things have been traditionally, yet it is not the only change that this Google phone is likely to create.

The article “Google shows how to trash a business model or three” demonstrates how the Google phone could dramatically affect not only the handset, phone provider and GPS markets but how the operating system that runs on the Nexus One (Android) could end up running in many common household devices. If this is not bad enough for the competition I can think of another major reason why the competition should be running scared.

What would happen if Google offered the phone for free say, in exchange for pushing you advertising? Would you take it? Such a business model really only makes sense for someone like Google and it could potentially blow competitors our of the water. How can they compete with a $0 phone? The phone business is not what’s important to Google, it’s about getting more people connected to the Internet so they view Google Ads, and in that respect it makes sense to subsidize handsets for consumers.

You’d therefore think that it’s also logical for Google to offer free Internet WiFi access to people wouldn’t you? Guess what? They’re already doing that, see “Free WiFi for the holidays”. Do you begin to see how Google is shaking up the market? I certainly do and can only see it only getting rougher for anyone who doesn’t appreciate that (barring an anti-competition suit from the U.S. Department of Justice or the European Union, which is becoming more likely every day now).
 
If you want to start understanding the mind of Google I’d recommend you read “What Would Google Do” by Jeff Jarvis. You can even read in on the Amazon Kindle but maybe soon the Google e-book device.

Given that this year the number of mobile devices accessing the Internet (i.e. mobile phones) will exceed the number of desktop devices (i.e. PC’s), so I’ve heard at least, who stands to benefit the most from this? Perhaps Google and Apple? Who stands to loss the most from this? Perhaps Microsoft? What is Microsoft’s response so far to the threat? Good question. Not having used either alternative to Microsoft’s offering I can only speculate, but having read “What Would Google Do” and know who I’d put money on at this stage.

Another nail

One the major selling points of something like Microsoft Exchange Server is that it not only allows you to send and receive emails, but it also has a calendar that in a network environment you can share with others. This allows people to see when others are busy, schedule meetings and so on. Very handy. The problem now is that this type of functionality is locked inside a business’s network and also it typically doesn’t work with people using other calendaring platforms like Google Calendar.

A potential solution to this issue that I have discovered is Tungle. In summary here’s what it offers:

Schedule – Send invitations proposing multiple times and let Tungle find the time that works for everyone. Tungle handles everything from time zones, to double booking, to updating your calendar.

Publish – Customize your personal scheduling page. Show only the times you want to be available. Invite others to schedule meetings with you. Meetings get booked on your terms and others don’t have to sign up.

Share – Share calendars across companies, systems and time zones. You control who you share with and what you share – free/busy or full details

Tungle works from Outlook, Google Calendar, iCal/Entourage and Lotus Notes. I have created an account and published my calendar at http://tungle.me/ciaops. If you visit the you’ll see all the available times I have. If you wanted to have a meeting with me then you could simply select a time and make a request via the web page. All the details, once approved, get sync’ed to everyone’s calendar.

I’ve already used Tungle to schedule couple of meetings and I have to say that so far it was worked really well as most requests I get are ‘I’d like to meet when are you free’. So rather than bouncing requests back and forth via email email I can simply get the person to select a time in Tungle and it’ll end up in my calendar. All very nice and easy.

Once you have something like Tungle, then why would you need Exchange calendaring? I could simply use Outlook and sync my calendar with other members of my team no matter what calendar they use. I can let external parties view my availability directly from the web or their iPhone. I don’t you can do that as easily from Exchange.

Now I must admit I can’t see how these guys are going to make money (hello premium services I’ll bet) but this ‘proof of concept’ is certainly a great step. Of course there will always be concerns over privacy but these can be worked around (like only publishing a ‘business calendar’), however if the business value grossly outweighs this then it is less of a concern.

If you need a tool to allow people to schedule appointments with you and reduce the amount of time wasted finding a convenient free slot for everyone concerned then I’d suggest you take a look at Tungle. If you are interested to see how Tungle could be another nail in the coffin of the traditional Microsoft Exchange calendaring, I’d also recommend you take a look.

Regression to the mean


So it’s 2010 and plenty of people out there are making New Year’s resolutions. Personally I’m not one for picking a specific date to commence a goal, once I’ve set it I’d rather get going immediately. I do however appreciate that everyone is different and that the important thing is finding something that works for you. I will however point out why I believe New Year’s and most other resolutions fail miserably.

We are all typically the average (or mean) of our environment. If you want to reduce your golf handicap, you don’t play with people who you constantly beat, you play with people who are better than you. Even though you may lose, your game will improve because it is moving towards a higher average. The same theory applies in many other walks of life if you stop and think about it. Maybe the reason you aren’t a billionaire is that you don’t hang out with billionaires, instead you typically hang out with people in your own socio-economic demographic (i.e. those who make a similar amount if money as your do).

Now let’s say that you’ve made a resolution to change. Typically this change is quite different from your current situation (or mean/average position). One of the most common New Year’s resolutions is to lose weight. People who probably do very little exercise suddenly decide to do 10 times the exercise they would normally do. If they could maintain that 10 times regime then everything would be great however I’ll content that the chances of being able to maintain any deviation from the mean actually decrease the further the deviation is from the mean. In this case I would say that the chances of maintaining the 10 times resolution are no better than one in 10 i.e. 10%.

Instead, if they made a resolution to do just a little bit more exercise (at least initially), to twice their current average or mean say, I’d bet their chances of succeeding are now one in two i.e. 50%. The issue is that people fail to appreciate the inertia that the mean or average effect brings. In short, it is very difficult to change overnight, because what you are ultimately looking to achieve is an improvement of your mean performance, whatever that is and one sudden massive change doesn’t stand much chance.

If you plan to make a life changing resolution then to be successful you need to look at it like walking down a road as well. In such a situation you either walk down the left or the right hand sides. Walking down the centre is simply madness because sooner or later you will lose an argument with a vehicle. So before you start out you need to come to a decision of either walking on the left hand side (no I won’t do this) or the right hand side (yes, I will do this) but never down the middle of the road (maybe I’ll do this).

As simple and obvious as all this sounds most people typically over look these things when making their resolutions. They figure the more radical the change the better without understanding that the chances of success decrease with the distance from the current mean or average. True success lies in improving the mean value of your resolution and the easiest method achieving this is via small but regular increments. This regularity requires a discipline to make the desired change – that is, walking down the right hand side of the road rather than the middle.

How many road kills are we likely to see in the next few days as people walk down the centre of the road vacillating with all the best intentions of making a change but dooming themselves to failure because they failed to understand the overriding trend of the regression to the mean? It’s all simple math really.

Email newsletter coming soon

After some thought I have come to the conclusion that blogs are great but they are typically very unstructured. As an author what you see here is normally what grabs my fancy at any time. Many people reading this blog may wish to refer to items at a later stage but all that can get messed up in the whole RSS reader thing. Also, if you wanted to refer to an item that was mentioned some time ago it may be difficult to find given the fact that the topics aren’t particularly structured. It doesn’t make the most appropriate communication medium does it?

I’ve also decided that if I want to lift my profile I need to access people who don’t traditionally regularly read blogs (which is probably the majority of people in the real world isn’t it?). For these people the most effective method of communication is via email since they are more familiar with receiving and retaining it for future reference. From a marketing point of view it is also probably easier for them to forward email correspondence than to refer a contact to a blog.

With all this in mind I have decided from this month I’m going to start doing a regular email newsletter (probably every month at this stage). It will contain topics that I discuss here on my blog (but in a more structured manner), information about technology (especially cloud computing) and what’s happening with the CIAOPS (like my upcoming SharePoint webinar).

So what I’m initially asking for is that if you read this blog kinda regularly, if you could go and sign up for my newsletter at:

http://ciaops.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=e641b9327b1cf4c45ad4e593f&id=c851ddf6cf

I would really appreciate it.

I’m looking to produce the first newsletter around the 15th of January so if you have any suggestions about what you’d like to see, what you think would interest people or how I should do this then I’d love to hear from you (director@ciaops.com). I can’t promise that I’ll get it right initially but I can promise that I’ll be looking at working constantly to improve what I offer based on feedback, so don’t be shy, let me know your thoughts.

Two more points

An interesting read over on Dave Overaton’s blog ”Server line-up for small businesses (and home) is increasing in options (or complexity for some) – SBS 2008, Home, Foundation, Windows Standard Server or BPOS – how do you choose?” where he attempts to discern the best option in IT for a small business.

Interestingly he rates a Windows PC network at the top and SBS and Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite last. I also especially liked these charts he has come up with:

and

Now I am generally in agreement with the conclusions that he reaches but I think that he has overlooked two important facts.

1. It is unlikely that a single IT solution is going to be adopted by most businesses these days.

As I noted in my recent blog post “Up in the sky”, in relation to cloud services at least

“data also shows that only 16% of those who have adopted cloud computing, or will within 12 months, will go solely with an off-premises model. But 50% of those respondents will go with a mixture on both on-premises and off premises.”

So what about the combination of a Windows PC network and BPOS? What about Windows Foundation server combined with BPOS? These are certainly going to provide far more options and flexibility than just the single product on its own.

2. Do not overlook the impact of Google Apps

If there ever an elephant in the room that most Microsoft types constantly neglect, ignore, dismiss over overlook it’s Google. Using their cloud based solution of Google Apps works extremely well for businesses in this target market (much like BPOS does). Again, it will provide its strongest appeal when used in conjunction with a Windows network or Windows Foundation server say.

I understand where Dave is coming from in his analysis but I’d like to contend that he is thinking about SMB customers in terms of the ‘old world’. Today’s SMB customers want the flexibility to work anywhere, with unlimited access to their data and the ability to share it will all the members of their team easily and quickly. They don’t want to shell out thousands of dollars for a server based solution (read SBS) when they can achieve something almost identical with online services on a per month per user basis. As I have said many time before, cloud computing not only changes the technology side of the argument but it also changes the economic argument for a customer. This economic model is far more important to a customer generally.

Dave has done a remarkable job with his analysis however he has perhaps unwittingly confirmed again, in my mind at least, the way technology people look at technology is not the way that customers do. Secondly, it highlights the fact that resellers face a herculean task trying to support the huge variety of possible solutions for a customer. That is sure fire way to burn people out in the end. Finally, I still see that online services, from Goggle, Microsoft or whomever, are going to have a major impact in the SMB space.

Upcoming SharePoint webinar

Announcing the first of the CIAOPS webinars for 2010.

 

100107 – SharePoint Questions and Answers 1

Topics covered:
– Configuring and scheduling command line backups
– Document management best practices
– SharePoint alternatives and downsides
– SharePoint 2010 Foundation
– Embedding YouTube into SharePoint

Presenter: Robert Crane
Date: Thursday 7th of January 2010
Time: 10.00am (Sydney, Australia time)
Duration: 60 minutes
Cost: $10 ex GST
Level: 2 (Intermediate)
Prerequisites: None

Details
This webinar will answer many of the most popular questions we see regarding SharePoint technologies.

Registration: To register send an email to director@ciaops.com.

Don’t forget that our previous webinars:

091112 – Introduction to SharePoint (Free)

091126 – Basics of using SharePoint (Free)

091210 – Basic SharePoint administration ($10)

 

Are also available upon request (director@ciaops.com)

I hope to see you there.

Up in the sky


A few posts ago (I smell fear) I was lamenting the fact that Microsoft seemed to be getting pretty desperate about getting resellers on board to sell its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). I pointed out that in my opinion existing resellers and their inertia when moving to this new platform was going to be a millstone around Microsoft’s neck that it needed to address.

Now the following article ‘Microsoft must sell the cloud to IT Pros in 2010’ covers similar ground. The article points confirms a number points that I have been speaking about for quite a while, such that if IT Pros

“don’t get in line to compete [with online services], they put themselves at a significant risk of being not there when real money starts to get spent in this space.”

and the fact that a majority of businesses are going to be dipping their toes into the world of online services:

“data also shows that only 16% of those who have adopted cloud computing, or will within 12 months, will go solely with an off-premises model. But 50% of those respondents will go with a mixture on both on-premises and off premises.”

and that BPOS is the best opportunity for IT resellers:

“The most popular is software-as-a-service, represented for Microsoft by BPOS, and infrastructure as a service, represented by SQL Azure and integration technology.”

and finally Microsoft has a major challenge on its hands but only a limited time frame in which to achieve it:

EMA’s Mann says couple all that with the fact that “IT never gets rid of anything” and you have a situation where “IT is not going to move to the cloud, they are going to add the cloud to what they have.”

And how IT can go about doing that will be Microsoft’s challenge. The clock begins ticking louder in 2010.

The reality is that most businesses are considering the adoption of some form of cloud technology in their business. It is certainly, not in the short term at least, going to replace on premise infrastructure it will supplement it. However the majority of IT Pros that I know have no online strategy at all, they like Microsoft, are focusing on the wrong aspects of changes online services are going to usher in. It is not about selling a per month service, it is about what opportunities become available with the wide spread availability of these tools.

To survive in this new environment you are either going to make money by volume (many sales at low margin) or specialization (fewer sales at much higher margins). It seems to me the option with the least effort required is simply moving up the food chain (i.e. the second option) but this appears to put the fear of God into so many IT Pros. Why? Because in past they became comfortable selling their IT knowledge. The reality is that Google has changed that landscape FOREVER. As evolution has taught us, now is the time to adapt or perish, because the window of opportunity will not remain open forever.

All new and shiny

I have now swapped over to the new hosting package for www.ciaops.com that I have been talking about of late. A bit early perhaps but I wanted to make sure it was all operational by the first of January.

Now, there is still plenty of work to do but the first step is always making the change. My previous design had the navigation menu on the right hand side of the screen much like my other recent web site upgrade (www.anzacsinfrance.com). I asked a few people their thoughts and they said that the perhaps the menu should go on the right. ‘I don’t like that’, was my initial reaction, ‘this is MY web site’, I thought. Wrong! I then remembered the whole reason I had gone down this refurbishment path. I was looking to create a web site that worked for visitors not for my own ego.

I swallowed my pride and decided that I needed to do some research. The first place I went to was probably one of the most popular sites on the Internet – Amazon. Guess what? Menus on the left. What about the BBC? Again, menus on the left. Wikipedia? Again, menus on the left. If I wasn’t finally convinced I found a tool form Google called Browser size.

According to the site:

Google Browser Size is a visualization of browser window sizes for people who visit Google. For example, the “90%” contour means that 90% of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least this size or larger.

This is useful for ensuring that important parts of a page’s user interface are visible by a wide audience. On the example page that you see when you first visit this site, there is a “donate now” button which falls within the 80% contour, meaning that 20% of users cannot see this button when they first visit the page. 20% is a significant number; knowing this fact would encourage the designer to move the button much higher in the page so it can be seen without scrolling.

So if I had my menus on the right of the page it was likely less people would have been seen them without scrolling. This would have meant they were less likely to stay and view the content, which is exactly what I don’t want.

Luckily with the new hosting tool, swapping the columns was a piece of cake and after doing this I must admit I liked the site better myself. This whole process goes to prove my earlier point about focusing on the reasons you have for doing something. I have some very specific goals for my web site going forward but what good is that if I ignore that when I go about implementation? Like derrrr, however it is very, very easy to overlook. I must now revisit some of my other projects and see if I’m making similar mistakes. Focus grasshopper, focus.

Another great set of tools to help me achieve my web site goals I have found is Google Webmaster Tools.
 
Once I have configured my sites in here I can see if they appear in Google and not only what search queries have resulted in my site being displayed but also how my sites raking in that query. There is a whole swag of tools available here that I need to fully explore but honestly, it is yet another way that Google is helping my business. Best of all, like most of Google’s stuff, Webmaster Tools is free. I once again see this a confirmation that Microsoft is falling behind in the battle to win hearts and minds in this ‘new economy’.

So I’m off to do some more fiddling and migrating of my web site www.ciaops.com. Stop by, have a look and let me know what you think as I’d really love to get feedback from some real visitors. Feel free to contact me via email (director@ciaops.com) with your thoughts.