Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • Limitations of the cloud

    Limitations of the cloud

    Today I wrote a review for Business Spectator on the HP Chromebook 11, describing it as a nice computer that fits the market space left by the demise of the netbook.

    For the HP Chromebook 11, its failing lies in the cloud services it relies upon; if you don’t have a reliable internet connection, or you’re on a flight, then you lose access to many of your files.

    This isn’t a problem for office use, most workplaces have reliable internet connections and don’t have to worry about interruptions however when you head out on the road, things change.

    A particular bugbear is using the device while on a plane, in my case I discovered the files were listed in the offline docs folder but were ‘unavailable’ on trying to open them.

    This is irritating early in a three hour flight when you’re trying to get some work done.

    At least with flights Google has done a deal with Gogo internet for inflight access which indicates the company has identified this as a problem, although the arrangement does nothing to help air travellers outside the US.

    For the moment, cloud based services are great if you have reliable broadband internet access but for travellers things will continue to be problematic.

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  • Trusting the computer security industry

    Trusting the computer security industry

    I’ve been sceptical of computer security vendors for a long time and it’s interesting that even as threats evolve, the suspicion remains.

    That suspicion comes from running an IT support business though the turn of the century virus epidemic, it’s hard to take the same companies whose products failed to detect the malware — and in some cases made problems worse.

    At the annual Tech Leaders Kickstart event today, I found that old hostility bubbling up as a series of security vendors warned us of the terrible threats in cyberland and how their product would solve most, if not all, of our problems.

    The irritating thing with their pitches is that none of them would articulate how the threats are evolving, or give real time examples.

    Not that there’s any shortage of real time examples with corporate security disasters like Sony and Target as great case studies of what can go wrong. Indeed, there’s very good reasons for businesses and every computer user to take security seriously.

    There’s something missing in the way tech security is sold and articulates the industry articulates its message.

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  • An era of exponential innovation

    An era of exponential innovation

    “How do we move to an exponential approach to innovation” asks John Hagel, Director of Deloitte’s Centre for the Edge in the latest Decoding the New Economy video.

    The Centre For The Edge is Deloitte’s Silicon Valley based think tank that identifies and explores emerging opportunities related to big shifts that are not yet on the senior management agenda.

    John tells us how the cycles of change and innovation have varied over the last thirty years in the industry; “the biggest thing for me is that nothing is stabilising. I often go back into history and look at things like electricity, the steam engine and the telephone – all hugely disruptive to business practices.”

    “But the interesting pattern is they all had a burst of innovation and then a levelling off,” says John . “You could stabilise and figure out how to use all this technology.”

    “With digital technology there is no stabilisation.”

    That lack of stabilisation leads to what John has termed ‘exponential innovation‘ where he sees business and education being rapidly transformed as technology upends established practices and methods.

    Healthcare, financial services and “any industry that has a high degree of information content ” are the sectors currently facing the greatest challenges in John’s view.

    John sees the solution for businesses and managers in looking at the current era not as a time of technology innovation but of institutional innovation. That institutions, like companies, have to reinvent how they are organised.

    Reinventing well established companies or centuries old bureaucracies is a massive challenge, but if John Hagel’s view is right then that radical change to institutions is what is going to be needed to face a rapidly changing society.

    Bank image by Ben Earwicker, Garrison Photography of Boise, ID through sxc.hu

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  • Hitting the eighty percent of needs

    Hitting the eighty percent of needs

    “I don’t use ninety percent of what’s in Microsoft Word” has been the complaint of computer users for years as they struggled through the myriad features of box software products.

    In the days of floppy disks and CDs, software developers tried to deliver as many features as they could; despite the fact that the ordinary user only needed a core set of functions and that most items on the menus went untouched.

    The result was bloated, difficult to use software. The cloud computing model changes this, particularly in business fields like accounting software.

    Last week saw a blitz of releases from cloud accounting services with Xero, Intuit and MYOB all making big announcements.

    MYOB announced a wide ranging product refresh, Intuit their mobile service and Xero its new board directors that point the direction for its US expansion.

    A key part of all the announcement was how the services are all boasting of their partner ecosystems developing add ons that improve users’ functionality.

    Once consequence of having an army of developers plugging into the product means that companies don’t have to ship bloated packages that have dozens of features that are irrelevant to each users’ needs.

    Xero’s Australian CEO,  Chris Ridd, put this well during the week by observing that company aims to “address the basic eighty percent of needs”.

    This is the exact opposite of the box software model of the past where vendors would try to pack more features into their products which gave rise to the term bloatware.

    Microsoft’s Office package was probably the best example of this massive growth in the product size, with the installation files eventually taking up a full 4.3Gb DVD to deliver something that most people were happy with when WordPerfect 2.0 shipped on three floppy disks.

    That change to the software model is a good example of how business practices and methods change as technology evolves; it also illustrates just one of the fundamental changes older software companies are having to deal with as cloud services change their industry.

    We can still have all the features we want in a software package, but we’ll just have to connect – and probably pay for the add ons.

    Today, we’re more likely to be scrambling to find an add-on rather than complaining about features we don’t need.

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  • Nothing is stabilising – welcome to an era of exponential innovation

    John Hagel of Deloitte’s Centre for the Edge joined Decoding the New Economy to discuss his view that we’re living in an age of exponential innovation.

    “Increasingly our view is that it’s creating a challenge for companies, traditional businesses who say ‘we’ve been operating in a linear fashion for decades or in some cases centuries or more’ but how do we move to an exponential approach to technology so we don’t get overwhelmed.”

    I’ll be writing the interview up in more detail later, but for the moment enjoy the video.

    Image of John Hagel by Trycatch though Wikimedia

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