Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • The need for speed

    The need for speed

    I’m at the Kickstart Forum for IT journalists on the Gold Coast this weekend talking to various companies and technology thought leaders on the direction of the industry.

    For the forum’s opening keynote, opposition spokesperson and former Optus telecommunications executive Paul Fletcher described his concerns about the Australian government’s National Broadband Network.

    Many of Paul’s objections to the project are based on the failure of former attempts to build telecommunications networks – citing Aussat, the NextGen fibre network, OneTel and international disappointments like WorldCom and Global Crossing.

    The other main concern is that no-one will use it. He cites a Parliamentary committee that where eHealth providers said their service could be adequately provided by a 512Kbit connection, a tiny fraction of the 100Mbit speed promised by the NBN.

    Previous failures aren’t a good indicator of the success or otherwise of the NBN, but what’s more important is what a poor job industry’s doing in explaining how high speed Internet can help their businesses.

    The big challenge for NBN advocates who believe this project is the essential infrastructure of the 21st Century, is to articulate the benefits and potential. We’re not doing a very good job at the moment.

    What’s your view on how high speed Internet can help your business or community?

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  • Pro Bono

    Pro Bono

    “Could you write a guest post for our corporate blog?”

    “Sure, I’d be delighted. How much are you paying?”

    “Sorry, we don’t pay. You’ll be getting a lot of exposure.”

    This organisation had a profit of over five billion dollars last year. Imagine how much the outfit would be making if the managers and executives contributed their time for free in the hope of getting some “exposure”?

    It’s nice to be recognised as an expert, but if you’re not going to make a living then it’s just an expensive, time consuming hobby.

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  • Navigating the Internet jungle

    Navigating the Internet jungle

    I usually don’t pay much attention to stories about Apple malware given that most hysterical stories about Mac viruses are written by charlatans spruiking third rate security products.

    The story of the Flashback Trojan is an interesting one though, not because the malware is particularly original or that it comes with the usual hysterical claim of being part of the coming wave of viruses that will wipe the smug smiles off Mac users’ facers.

    Flashback’s interesting because it combines all the tactics of a modern computer virus or malware, bringing together unpatched vulnerabilities and some social engineering with the intention of stealing user passwords.

    These are risks regardless of what type of computer, smartphone or tablet you use. It illustrates how the security risks have moved on since the first epidemic of Windows computer viruses just before the beginning of the century.

    Similarly, the motivation for writing viruses and malware has evolved. Where it was once an intellectual exercise for bored, highly skilled young code cutters, today it’s a lucrative criminal enterprise aimed at getting access to victim’s bank accounts and other assets.

    Which is the reason why it’s a good idea to have different passwords for various online services – no more using the same password for your online banking, Minecraft and Facebook accounts.

    Having the latest security patches installed is also important, particularly with third party products like Adobe Flash, Java or Microsoft Office, so don’t ignore those warnings as a caller to one of my radio slots boasted.

    We also need to keep our wits about us online and watch out for the sneaky tricks used to fool us into opening malware, it’s a jungle out here on the web.

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  • The battle for big data

    The battle for big data

    Information has always been a key part of doing business – having an intimate knowledge of customers and suppliers is one of the traits of a successful entrepreneur.

    As Internet access becomes taken for granted and computer processing power becomes cheaper, the nature of how business data is used is changing.

    Earlier this week the iStrategy digital marketing conference was held in Sydney. Much of the talk at the event was about how marketers can use the data being generated by the Web.

    At the opening panel representatives from PwC, Google, Expedia and News Limited showed how Internet businesses are gathering data.

    Nicholas Chu of Expedia went through the journey of a family to Disney Land, describing how they are integrating search and social tools into the experience of organising a holiday online and catching up with friends.

    Lucinda Barlow of Google told the story of how a doting father’s baby photos were saved after he lost his phone, luckily it was all synched in the cloud with Google+ and Picasa services.

    All this data is being collated, saved, mined and processed. Companies like Google and Expedia – not to mention Facebook or Apple – see this information as their businesses’ major asset.

    One of the other panel members, Stuart Spiteri of News Limited, raised the problem with this when he asked if everybody in the room really understood the consequences of giving their data to intermediaries like Apple or Facebook.

    For businesses this is a problem, we’ve become used to the free platforms given to us by Facebook and Google while the easy distribution systems like iTunes mean it’s easier to give Apple a 30% cut than sell products ourselves.

     

    In the travel industry it means Expedia or any of the other dozens of travel planning sites like Tripadvisor or, again, Google know more about our customers and the patterns affecting our business than the local hotel, restaurant or tourist attraction does.

    That easy booking service suddenly looks expensive when it becomes clear it could be offering different holiday or meal options to your customer whose likes and preferences it now intimately knows.

    When the web first came along many of us, myself included, believed it would get rid of the middle man. We were wrong.

    The web has affected the businesses of existing middlemen like department stores, newspapers or travel agents but in their place a whole new group including companies like Amazon, Google and Expedia have taken their place.

    Whether these middlemen add more value than ones they replaced will be seen, but we can be certain the new breed are much better at collecting and analysing data about our customers.

    One of the big battles for the next decade is going to be for customer data. Smaller businesses may find themselves marginalised as the big Internet companies fight to grab information about consumers.

    It’s worthwhile treasuring what you know about your clients and considering exactly which of the online gatekeepers you’re sharing these vital assets with.

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  • Software’s mini revolutions

    Software’s mini revolutions

    The CIA’s ‘revolutionary’ announcement of their changes to the way they buy software shows just how the relationship between software vendors and businesses is evolving as cloud computing methods become widely adopted.

    For businesses it means more flexibility and efficiency while for software companies the new marketplace is requiring them to be more flexible and responsive. Those changes will challenge some vendors.

    What’s driving these changes is ‘big data’ – the explosion of data being collected and stored – and the move to cloud based computer systems.

    The CIA, like most businesses or home computer users, used to buy software by the license. For small businesses and homes this was by buying a box of disks from the local computer shop while for big organisations there were volume licenses where they bought the right to use tens of thousands of copies of the one program.

    Box licensing was never satisfactory, it was difficult for users to know what exactly they bought and customers were always a year or more behind the trend.

    Keeping up with Technology

    One of the big pluses with cloud based systems is you don’t have to wait a year or two for a new release incorporating the latest technology. It’s rolled out as it becomes available without any work by the user.

    With the old box software model you had to wait for the latest release and even then the features you were waiting for could still be missing.

    As technology is moving fast online, organisations like the CIA can’t afford to wait.

    Pay as you go

    Another problem with the old software model was that big and small organisations found they were buying things they didn’t need.

    This is particularly true with licensing agreements where a company might have 100,000 licenses when they only needed 15,000.

    Pay as you go billing, which is the standard model for cloud computing services, means a lot more flexibility and a much more efficient way of managing software spend.

    Closer relationships

    In his speech describing the changes, the CIA’s top technology officer Ira Hunt said the agency is prepared to give vendors a “peek under the covers”.

    This sort of closer relationship between suppliers and customers is one of the biggest attractions of the cloud computing model. It means both users and suppliers are more closely aligned.

    For software vendors that close alignment is where the opportunities lie; the old days of flogging fat, expensive licenses are over and the successful sellers of computer programs will be quicker and nimbler.

    The CIA has been accused of formenting many revolutions around the world, this is one most business owners should be happy about them leading.

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