The IT Beacon

IT Demystified - Terms - SoMoClo

What happens when JLo, SuBo and Docomo are smashed into each other at high speeds in an acronym accelerator? You get SoMoClo.

Such an outcome should in the acronym creation industry (aka marketing) be considered an unfortunate mutation and so be instantly discarded. However this one has escaped from the lab and will soon be coming to a cocktail party conversation near you.

I believe it was coined by Aberdeen Group to capture the converging worlds of social media, mobile and the Cloud. And indeed these are all important.

This convergence is particularly important from an enterprise perspective. Organisations that fail to capitalise on all three and fail to integrate their strategies on all three are likely doomed to failure.

It was pointed out to me by one of the Aberdeen guys on Twitter that whilst Apple and Google built out Cloud and social media from mobile, RIM didn’t.

So whilst it is a clumsy acronym and one likely to generate the perception of affectedness in anyone willing to use it in public, it represents a very important technology triad. One that will increasingly underpin the business models of both technology and end user organisations.   

Ade McComack

The death of talent?

It is claimed that the digital economy will eventually obviate the need for people. Why use a high maintenance sensitive carbon life form with undisclosed loyalties when you can use new technology for a fraction of the price and management overhead?

It’s a no-brainer. The race to deliver more for less is accelerating this.

But there comes a point when every organisation has basically automated everything and therefore the race to the bottom is over.

Therefore the only option is to start racing back up the value chain. And this is where people become important again. But this time the people are not compliant corporate cogs but highly creative artists; people who are a nightmare to manage but are in effect organic idea generators.

And once you start hooking these people up together using collaboration technologies you have an innovation engine that will differentiate your organisation from the rest.

So ironically in a digital economy people become more and not less important. But these people really are ‘talent’.

IT Demystified – Trends: M-Commerce

The concept of conducting financial transactions via one’s mobile phone is nothing new. The practicalities of offering it were held back for a long time because of poor security. Thus banks for example would let you carry out read operations (view/print) but not write (credit/debit account).

Today we can transact quite happily.

The next step now is the wide spread use of near field communications, whereby the mobile device holder can conduct transactions by either touching or waving the mobile device in close proximity to the payment terminal.  

This will be particularly valuable in the world of micro-payments. Newsagents don’t like taking credit cards to pay for newspapers so m-commerce gets around the issue.

The question is who will be the beneficiary of this emerging market. The banks and card companies regard this as their territory. But the mobile phone operators see this as a big opportunity. They can simply extend the use of their billing systems to include items purchased via the device.

Standards have generally held back progress, but with Google launching its Wallet offering in 2011, it looks like 2012 will see massive growth in this area.

Ade McCormack

Tech Sector Review - December 2011

Regime agnostic mass surveillance technology

Wikileaks has recently released information on 160 companies, many of whom are high profile Western organisations, who sell mass surveillance technologies that are being used by repressive regimes. These include technologies to monitor the activities of iphone, Blackberry and Gmail users. Technology also exists to monitor Wikileaks whistle blowing submission technology, which caused the Wikileaks revelation to be delayed.

HP taken down a notch or two

Beleaguered technology giant HP has had its credit worthiness degraded by Standard and Poor ratings agency. The debt rating was moved from A to triple B, which is three notches above junk status. With a higher cost of borrowing, HP will find it even more difficult to get itself back on an even keel.

Old media is the new media

For over a decade pundits have heralded the death of TV and newspaper advertising. Well new media player Google is actually increasing its investment in these channels, doubling its spend in 2011 year-on-year. Convincing people to move from Internet Explorer to Chrome or Facebook to Google + has required the new media giant to take this ‘radical’ approach.

Anonymous charity donations

BT, Barclays and HSBC are just a few companies that have had their clients’ credit card details stolen by Anonymous, the hacking collective. It has threatened to use the details to make unsolicited charitable donations. US security company Stratfor has reported that its clients have had their cards used in this manner. Ultimately this is likely to hurt the charities as they will incur charge back fees and administrative costs in handling the bogus donations.

New media practices – less is more

Email looks to be moving out of fashion, though the kids have known it for ages. Anyway technology player Atos Origin plans to ban email from the organisation by 2014. Chip maker Intel has experimented with ‘no email’ Fridays. Tech player Cap Gemini has reduced its email traffic by 40% by using workflow software. More recently carmaker Volkswagen has curtailed the email traffic to its staff by restricting Blackberry email services to 30 minutes either side of the working day.

Oracle wobbles

Software giant Oracle is known for its bullish style and its ability to deliver the figure to justify its posturing. The bullishness continues but the figures have turned south. Its recent quarter on quarter sales growth forecast fell by 5%, which in turn knocked 9% off the share price. Given Oracle’s reputation for market robustness, it is perhaps an indicator that 2012 will be a tough year for the IT industry.

A weapon of mass deception

Twitter has played a key role in political uprisings in 2011. Such is its power to keep fellow protesters and the world abreast of developments and so gain international support. So it is interesting that Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi billionaire, has placed a $300m stake in Twitter. In fairness he has a penchant for new tech stocks and is considered a liberal by Middle Eastern standards. It does highlight though that if you want to control the message it can only be of benefit to control the messenger.

2011 - The Tech Sector Review

In Summary

2011 can be considered a year of transition, but revolution captures it more accurately. The established technology players are showing uncharacteristic vulnerability. The new guard focused on content (Google and Apple) are taking control.

The Cloud is the medium in which the changes are taking place. I would hazard to say that 2011 was the year in which the IT industry visibly commenced its demise. And in parallel what we are seeing are the green shoots of the emerging information and knowledge industries.

The following are a (reverse chronological) sample of the main highlights of 2011.

Ade McCormack

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Oracle wobbles

Software giant Oracle is known for its bullish style and its ability to deliver the figure to justify its posturing. The bullishness continues but the figures have turned south. Its recent quarter on quarter sales growth forecast fell by 5%, which in turn knocked 9% off the share price. Given Oracle’s reputation for market robustness, it is perhaps an indicator that 2012 will be a tough year for the IT industry.

HP downgrade

Ratings agency S&P have dropped technology vendor HP's credit rating by two notches. This will make borrowing more expensive for the company. The rating remains several notches above junk status, which means that HP will still be perceived as a plausible investment option. HP has experienced a lot of uncertainty with having three CEOs in less than a year and just as many strategies. Current CEO Meg Whitman, who was previously CEO at eBay, is perhaps preparing HP for auction.

Cisco surprising itself

It's been a tough year for the network component provider. A drop in market confidence was followed by a significant and expensive overhaul. Cisco 2.0 has now reported its second quarter of exceeding analysts' expectations. CEO John Chambers reported a surprise surge in orders from US corporate, government and telecoms customers. Its shares jumped 4% in after hours trading when it announced its positive order growth news.

Girl power

IBM names its first female chief executive ever. Virginia Rometty will take the helm from Sam Palmisano at the start of next year. Her strengths lie in sales, marketing and strategy, particularly in respect of IT services. She will also be the first IBM CEO to have not run the hardware business. So her profile is perfectly suited to where IBM needs s to go as opposed to where IBM has been.

iTV

It transpires in the authorised biography of the late Steve Jobs that the success formula for Apple was to focus on products and not sales. He claimed that once companies valued sales over product, the product would go downhill. He also indicated that Apple is entering the TV market. So it would appear that Apple is planning to take control of every channel consumers use to access digital content.

HP Jittery

Having just launched a bold strategy that involved discarding the PC/consumer business and acquiring clever BI vendor Autonomy, HP's board have just kicked out CEO Leo Apotheker. In a surprising move, they have replaced him with Meg Whitman, ex CEO of Ebay. They have clearly lost their nerve. Given she is already financially secure, it is difficult to see what will motivate her, other than the challenge associated with having no experience of leading an organisation that does not focus on auctioning.

Tablet latest

Sony is late to the party having just announced its Tablet S offering. This more or less coincides with HP and Sharp's departure from the market. Using the Android platform, it is a viable alternative to Apple's iPad, and Sony does have cachet in the lifestyle branding department. Microsoft is looking to blur the PC -- tablet market place with its forthcoming Windows 8, and thereby keep some control over the market. BlackBerry maker Rim shipped under 50% of it anticipated volume of PlayBook tablets, which contributed to its share price dropping 20%. One can't help but feel that the tablet game is over and it's time to get in line with the dominant player.

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Google exits tablet market

Google will have to pay $500m in settlement over displaying adverts from companies selling unlicensed prescription drugs. The companies are typically based in Canada and selling drugs that are manufactured in India and China and other places where the US Food and Drugs Administration are unable to exert control.

HP Re-Invent(s) itself

Technology giant HP took heed of its own 'Invent' tagline by announcing radical changes. Firstly it intends to spin off its PC and printer business. A good move as this is a relatively low margin business plus it enables HP to exit the consumer market and focus on the enterprise space. Secondly it is to acquire UK (clever) search software company, Autonomy for approximately $10 billion. It's not so obvious what the benefit is here. However given that Autonomy's software is used to help organisations make better decisions, it will now give HP something of interest to talk about when they push into the c-suite.

Hactivity news

Lulz Security has been busy with its forays into the servers of Sony, the US Senate and the CIA. It appears to be a breakaway faction of the Anonymous online activist organisation. They seem to be both having fun whilst highlighting gaping vulnerabilities in their targets. The CIA attack seems to have been triggered by reports that the US will take cyber attacks from foreign countries as a legitimate reason to respond with military force. With this in mind Google has accused China of hacking into the emails of senior US and South Korean officials.

Free the Cloud

Apple is offering a free Cloud service that will dramatically accelerate the update of web services and put pressure on IT functions to deliver Cloud based services to their users. No more synchronisation of files and emails between devices with the iCloud. Apple appears to be demoting the importance of its hardware, which suggests that its core business is more likely to become service and perhaps even digital rights management based.

Chrome Cloud

Google continues to gnaw away at Microsoft's foundations with the announcement of its Chromebook computers. Acer and Samsung are set to sell notebooks running Google's Chrome operating system. The focus will be on web based applications and companies will buy these Chromebooks as a service than as a product. This is a direct attack at the traditional PC model from which Microsoft has greatly benefited. This will be an exercise in marketing rather than engineering prowess because if organisations wanted to go down this Cloud-client route they already have the option to use a Linux based PC. But they haven't, which suggests there is no market yet for Google's offering.

All change in smartphone market

Nokia's dominance in the mobile phone industry took a significant turn when Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC's market value overtook that of the struggling Finnish giant. Of course the market valuations could easily flip again, but it is significant that a player that didn't exist in 1996 is now threatening Nokia. The mobile power axis has moved eastwards from Scandinavia to the Far East; Sony, LG Electronics and Samsung being other significant players. Nokia remains top in terms of volume, but judging by the devices I saw on show at a recent CIO event in Helsinki, I think it will lose that crown in the foreseeable future.

Cisco shake up

Networking and collaboration specialist Cisco has had to reconsider what its core business is in the light of a loss of analyst confidence. Its shares have fallen 35% in one year despite a 15% upturn on the Nasdaq Composite index. CEO John Chambers stated that it would refocus on its core markets in routers and switching, collaboration, data centre virtualisation and video. The demising of the Flip YouTube friendly video recording device suggests that Cisco is reversing out of the consumer space to focus on the enterprise market.

Zune player RIP

Microsoft has decided to ditch its Zune player and refocus its efforts on a software only strategy in the consumer electronics space. Apple appears to have out branded Microsoft. The word on the street is that Microsoft failed to out innovate its competitors in this space and has thus discovered that emulation is not enough to knock Apple off the perch. The arrival of the iPad2 was most likely the final nail in the coffin this month. Amazing what a few cameras and a choice of protective cover colours can do.

i-hexane

There is 'trouble at mill' again for Apple. Over one hundred workers at a Taiwanese touch screen manufacturer used by Apple have been poisoned by a chemical used to clean the screens. Previously the factory used alcohol for the job but then changed to n-hexane as it evaporated faster and thus sped up production. Apple has taken action on this. Nokia and HTC also use the same supplier. Some time back there was controversy surrounding one of Apple's Chinese manufacturers, where over a dozen workers committed suicide.

LinkedIn to float

Business social networking company LinkedIn has announced its intentions to go public this year. Possibly the recent valuation of Facebook at $50bn might have triggered the founders into thinking about the big pay day. It will be interesting to see whether they change the business model to monetise their 90 million free subscribers. For some people the prospect of rebuilding their 500 plus contacts on another site may just warrant paying a small fee.

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