Category: cloud computing

Blurring the boundaries between home and office

The workplace is changing as mobile internet becomes an expected part of society.

“My ambition is to only spend four or five hours in the office,” said Vodafone Australia CEO Iñaki Berroeta when asked at a lunch in Sydney today about how he would like to structure his working day.

For many Australians, this is becoming the reality of work as increasingly their job is following them home and into their social lives according to Microsoft’s Life On Demand white paper released this week.

The blurring of the lines between home and work is no surprise to small business owners, senior executives or those establishing a startup, however according to Microsoft this is becoming normal for the majority of workers.

In their paper, Microsoft found 30% of Australian workers are checking work emails on devices at home before they leave for work and 23% are doing work activities while they are socialising with their friends.

Overall, more than a quarter of Australians work from anywhere which has more than doubled in the last five years.

This is largely due to the rise of tablet computers and accessible wireless broadband. A direct consequence of this is nearly half of commuters work or study while on public transport.

Being able to work on the train, bus or tram is changing the usage of public transport with many commuters preferring to use the usually slower option (at least in Australia) over driving as it’s seen as more productive time. This is a cultural change that governments have been slow to understand.

Equally slow have been many businesses in understanding they have to deploy the tools that allow workers to be efficient while out of the office, this is the whole point of cloud services.

The workplace is changing as mobile internet becomes an expected part of society. How is your businesses catering to both your staff and customers’ needs in the age of the smartphone and tablet computer?

Building a billion dollar start up

Zendesk founder Mikkel Svane describes the journey of building a billion dollar startup

Two years ago we interviewed Mikkel Svane the founder of cloud service provider Zendesk about modern customer support.

Since we spoke to him Zendesk have had a successful IPO and is now worth over a billion dollars.

In the latest Decoding the New Economy video interview we catch up with Mikkel and discuss the journey from being a three person startup to a billion dollar listed company.

Collaboration and buzzwords

Collaboration tools are changing business but the progress is slower than some of us expected

Today in Technology Spectator, I have a piece on collaboration based around the Google and Deloitte paper released last week.

At the moment Google are on a marketing campaign promoting Apps for Business, for a previous campaign I prepared The Future of Teamwork which examined the benefits of cloud computing for industry.

It’s interesting how the message hasn’t changed a great deal in the last five year, despite it being valid.

Restructuring Microsoft

Will losing 5,000 jobs make Microsoft a nimble competitor?

After last week’s long memo from CEO Satya Nadilla, it was inevitable Microsoft would have to restructure around the company’s new direction.

Bloomberg now reports Microsoft will be laying off thousands of employees – possibly more than the 5,800 laid off in the recessionary depths of 2009.

With 127, 000 employees Microsoft could almost certainly do with a cull, to make the company as nimble as it needs to be may take more than 5,000 jobs.

Fear in the cloud – the loss of trust in online business

Should online businesses, particularly cloud services and social media platforms, begin to worry they’ve lost the trust of the community?

Today I spoke about online safety to the Australian Seniors’ Computer Clubs Association about staying safe online.

Hopefully I’ll have a copy of the presentation up tomorrow but what was notable about the morning was the concern among the audience about security and safety of cloud services.

The ASCCA membership are a computer savvy bunch – anyone who disparages older peoples’ technology nous would be quickly put in their place by these folk – but it was notable just how concerned they are about online privacy. They are not happy.

Another troubling aspect were my answers to the questions, invariably I had to fall back on the lines “only do what you’re comfortable with”  and “it all comes down to a question of trust.”

The problem with the latter line is that it’s difficult to trust many online companies, particularly when their business models relies upon trading users’ data.

Resolving this trust issue is going to be difficult and it’s hard to see how some social media platforms and online businesses can survive should users flee or governments enact stringent privacy laws.

It may well be we’re seeing another transition effect happening in the online economy.

Building an internet we’re not ashamed of

How do we build an internet we’re not ashamed of asks developer and writer Maciej Ceglowski

Late last month writer, painter and software developer Maciej Ceglowski spoke at the design and technology conference, Beyond Tallerand in Dusseldorf.

The Internet with a Human Face is his closing keynote for the conference – let’s try to kill that kill that awful term ‘locknote’ for closing presentations – and is a wonderful overview of the unintended consequences of the internet we’re now seeing emerge.

Maciej compares the internet’s effects with that of the motor car in the Twentieth Century – the rise of the automobile totally changed society in ways our great grandparents couldn’t have expected.

Unexpected consequences

In many respects the changes were positive; the age of the motor car saw massive increases in living standards through the second half of the century. However the immediate downside of those efficient supply chains were equally massive increases in obesity rates, suburban alienation and urban sprawl.

A similar thing is happening with this wave of technological changes; as Maciej describes in our presentation, our views of how the web was going to evolve is turning out to be very different to what we expected.

One great example is in small business advertising where we expected online channels would democratise marketing. Instead the exact opposite has happened.

Maciej’s view is far broader than just the relatively trivial problem of small business advertising, particularly with the ‘Internet never forgetting’ with the concentration of the industry in one of the world’s great earthquake zones as another major risk.

Building an internet we’re not ashamed of

Ultimately, though Maciej sees the problems facing the internet industry as a design problem.

“I have no idea how to fix it. I’m hoping you’ll tell me how to fix it. But we should do something to fix it. We can try a hundred different things. You people are designers; treat it as a design problem! How do we change this industry to make it wonderful again? How do we build an Internet we’re not ashamed of?”

While being ashamed is a big call, and probably unfair in that it’s like blaming Henry Ford for 2014 childhood obesity rates in Minnesota, Maciej has flagged that there are real adverse unintended consequences to the way the internet is evolving.

All of us involved in the industry need to recognise those adverse effects and start acting to fix these problems.

ABC Nightlife – security, dropping off the grid and 4D printing

Apple Security, the Heartbleed bug and dropping off the grid are the topics of the May 2014 ABC Nightlife spot

Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife across Australia from 10pm Australian Eastern time tonight to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

For the May 2014 spot we looked at computer security, specifically Apple ransomware and The Heartbleed bug along with dropping off the grid, 4D printing and the future of design.

To protect from the Oleg Pliss ransomware – or any similar problems – have a strong password, enable the screen passkey and enable two factor authentication.

Join us

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

Zen and the art of stockmarket listing

Zendesk think elegant and beautiful software is the future of cloud computing, the stockmarket seems to agree with them.

Cloud helpdesk service provider Zendesk today debuted on the New York Stock Exchange with the stocks seeing a 49% surge on their IPO price, taking its value to just under a billion dollars.

Last year Decoding the New Economy had the opportunity to talk to Mikkel Svane, the founder of Zendesk about his company.

Svane is an enthusiastic, open guy and clearly passionate about customer service – a field that’s the ugly stepsister of modern business. As Svane himself says, “no-one ever gets the girls by working on the helpdesk.”

‘Beautiful and elegant’ is a phrase Svane uses to describe his software and it’s notable how many other founders of cloud services use those words about their products – Xero’s Rod Drury even uses it as the company’s slogan.

Like many cloud services, both Xero and Zendesk are still not making a profit and a big fat stage for a stockmarket listing is always a worrying sign that an IPO might have been undervalued.

At the moment though, the initial stockmarket success of Zendesk is a win for some nice guys.

Computing in a fog

Cloud computing is not always the answer and that’s where fog computing comes in.

One of my favourite IT industry buzz words is fog computing.

Initially coined by Cisco Systems, fog computing also goes by the name ‘distributed computing’ or ‘edge computing’ – never accuse the IT industry of not having enough terms for the same thing.

The idea behind distributed, edge or fog computing is that sometimes cloud computing (another term) is not always suitable for jobs where internet connections are unreliable, sending things to a cloud server wastes valuable milliseconds or lots of unnecessary data is being gathered.

Cisco’s Wim Elfrink discusses fog computing in the interview he did with Decoding the New Economy earlier this year.

For many internet of things applications, edge computing makes sense as it means devices aren’t reliant on being constantly connected and the local computer can filter noise out of the data stream being sent to head office.

Another big advantage is in saving internet costs; rather than having say all the sensors on a car having their own expensive mobile connections they instead report back to a central computer which sends relevant information back to the dealer or manufacturer.

The car is also a good example of needed immediate responses; if the airbags are deployed, the onboard computer system has to make a lot of critical decisions immediately. Waiting for a response from a server on the other side of the world could cost lives.

For computing is not only a good example of how technology vendors make up their own catchy names for concepts, it also shows that there are limits to every solution. In this case, situations where cloud computing is not the answer.

Microsoft and the Internet of Your Things

Microsoft has come the IoT party with the ‘Internet of Your Things’ tagline

Microsoft has come late to the Internet of Things party, but it is has a good angle with it’s ‘Internet of Your Things’ tagline.

General Manager of Microsoft’s embedded systems division, Barb Edson, spoke with Decoding The New Economy about the company’s strategy with the Internet of Things.

For Microsoft, the emphasis is on the enterprise side of the business with Edson describing their strategy of “B2B2C” where the value in the IoT lies in managing the data for the businesses providing consumer services.

Most notable is the company’s IoT tagline, as Edson says; “from Microsoft’s perspective we view the Internet of Things as ‘the internet of your things.”

“Lots of companies out there talking about the Internet of Everything that there’s 212 billion devices, why do you care as business executive. You care about your things.”

Microsoft’s strategy is based on leveraging their own assets such as Azure cloud services, SQL Server and Dynamics along their customers’ existing infrastructure.

This retrofitting the internet of things to existing infrastructure is illustrated by Microsoft’s using the London Underground as its main reference site.

Connecting all 270 stations of London’s 150 year old Tube network to the IoT is a massive undertaking and one that can only be done by retrofitting existing monitoring and SCADA systems.

Interestingly the case study only look at Phase One of what appears to be pilot project in selected locations, the Microsoft spokespeople were a little unclear on this when asked.

The London Underground is only one example of millions of organisations that will grapple with adding existing equipment to the internet of things in coming years; it’s an opportunity that Microsoft has been smart to identify.

Edson however is clear on how Microsoft intends to help companies deal with the information overload facing managers, “I think the most exciting thing is we’re seeing real business problems being solved.”

Cloud computing’s walled gardens

Things are getting interesting for cloud computing as vendors try to lock users into their walled gardens

I’ve spent the last few days playing with Microsoft’s Office 365 and its iOS Apps for a review for tomorrow’s Business Spectator.

One thing that’s clear with comparing the various competitors in the online space is how all of them are trying to lock users into their own walled gardens.

This the various web empires are tying to lock us into their worlds isn’t surprising – it’s been going on for some time – however now we’re seeing it becoming harder to keep out of making a choice on whose empire you have to choose.

For the next generation of computers, this is going to be a challenge as the Internet of Things will be crippled should it turn out that one’s brand of smartcar won’t talk to your phone or intelligent garage door opener, let alone logistics chains breaking down due to an incompatibility somewhere in the process.

The cloud computing industry has entered an interesting period where the big players are hoping to carve up the market for themselves; what the market thinks about this remains to be seen.

Microsoft Office goes onto the iPad

Microsoft’s launch of Office for the iPad is another blow to the ailing PC industry.

After several years of stalling, MS Office makes it onto the iPad with an announcement this morning by Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella.

The idea of tying the product into the company’s Office 365 and Microsoft’s cloud services make sense although it might be a matter of too little, too late.

Perversely, if Office for the iPad is successful, it could remove one of the last barriers for business and power home users moving off PCs.

Microsoft’s move also shows cloud services are now the main focus of the company; Satya and his team have given up any attempt to shore up the traditional – and immensely profitable – box software business.

That is going to mean Microsoft’s financial statements are going to look very different in the near future.

Regardless of the success of Office for the iPad, what were Microsoft’s core businesses are deeply affected as the company evolves to the post-PC computer marketplace. The challenge is for Satya and his management team to manage that change.