Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: Innovation

  • Amazon Web Services and the new rules of business

    Amazon Web Services and the new rules of business

    The one company that has driven both the adoption of cloud computing and the current tech startup mania is Amazon Web Services.

    Later this week AWS celebrates its tenth birthday and Werner Vogels, the company’s Chief Technical Officer, has listed the ten most important things he’s learned over the last decade.

    The article is a useful roadmap for almost any business, not just a tech organisation, particularly in the importance of building systems that can evolve and understanding that things will inevitably break.

    Importantly Vogels flags that encryption and security have to be built into technology, today they are key parts of a product and no longer features to be added later.

    Most contentious though is Vogels’ view that “APIs are forever”, that breaking a data connection causes so much trouble for customers that it’s best to leave them alone.

    Few companies are going to take that advice, particularly in a world where changing business needs mean APIs have to evolve.

    There’s also the real risk for businesses that their vendors will depreciate or abandon APIs leaving key operational functions stranded, this could cause major problems for organisations in a world that’s increasingly automated.

    Vogel’s commitment to maintaining APIs may well prove to be a competitive advantage for Amazon Web Services in their competition with Microsoft Azure, Google and an army of smaller vendors.

    Werner Vogel’s lessons are worth a read by all c-level executives as well as startup founders looking to build a long term venture, in many ways they could define the new rules of business.

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  • When software ate the network

    When software ate the network

    I’m attending the Asia Pacific Cisco Live in Melbourne Australia this week which is starkley illustrating the shift in communications technologies and the business models around them.

    To kick off the press program Cisco made a joint announcement with Australian incumbent telco Telstra on the rollout of a smart software defined networking product.

    Software Defined Networking uses basic computer hardware, basically glorified personal computers, to do the jobs of the expensive routers, switches and network appliances that were insanely profitable for companies like Cisco a few years ago.

    It wasn’t so long ago when Cisco executives were taking technology journalists out to earnestly explain how Software Defined Networking (SDN) was feasible.

    Today, SDN is defining both the telco and communications industries as companies like Telstra look at bundling IT networking and software services into their offerings to prop up their falling margins. India’s Reliance Communications are a good example of how providers are trying to shift into new marketplaces.

    For telcos, communications vendors  and IT hardware sellers the changing technologies illustrate what Silicon Valley entrepreneur Marc Andreesen meant when he described how “software will eat the world.’

    Software is eating the IT hardware industry and telcos are seeing – hoping – it’s another lucrative opportunity. Businesses in other sectors should be thinking about how software is going to change their world.

    Paul travelled to Melbourne for Cisco Live as a guest of Cisco

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  • Cutting through Australia’s innovation rhetoric

    Cutting through Australia’s innovation rhetoric

    Four months ago, the Australian government launched its innovation agenda with the noble ambition to put the nation “on the right track to becoming a leading innovator.”

    The keenly awaited innovation statement was seen as a defining the new Prime Minister’s agenda after two decades of complacent political leadership. At the launch of the paper Malcolm Turnbull said “our vision is for Australians to be confident, embrace risk, pursue ideas and learn from mistakes, and for investors to back these ideas at an early-stage.”

    One of the early stage investors currently investing in Australia’s startup sector is Brisbane based entrepreneur, and Australian Shark Tank judge, Steve Baxter who spoke to Decoding the New Economy last week about where he sees the strengths and weaknesses in the proposals.

    Beating the rhetoric

    “Competitive threats are far more effective than rhetoric from a Prime Minister,” says Baxter in observing what really drives adoption and change while emphasizing that the announcement is a welcome shift,  “the change in messaging from the government has been very important. It’s having an impact and a future looking message has been fantastic.”

    While Baxter is positive about much of the incentives on offer and the importance of changes to regulations around bankruptcy and treatment of business losses, he flags the the delay in implementing the tax incentives as being a problem.

    Too focused on commercialisation

    Baxter though has been a long standing critic of Australia’s research sector and the emphasis on commercialisation of academic work is in his view one of the Innovation Statement’s major weaknesses, “commercialisation is a concept that we’ve failed at. It’s dead. We’ve put so much money into it, it’s actually embarrassing. We need a new mindset towards it.”

    “there are seven hundred million dollars of a billion going to the research sector. That’s not entrepreneurship. In fact universities and research institutes are the least entrepreneurial organisations you’ll ever come across.”

    “We need more business model innovation, we’re seeing too many people in lab coats with synchrotrons, square kilometre arrays which we have to do,” Baxter states. “What we’re not seeing the Dropboxes and the Instagrams and the Facebooks and the Wayze’s, the cool stuff that doesn’t need a two hundred million dollar building.”

    Thin pipelines

    As an early stage invest Baxter sees the real challenge for Australia lies in encouraging individuals to launch their own ventures, “I don’t think we’ve done enough yet to prove we have an investment problem when it comes to early stage companies,” he says. “I don’t believe we have a lack of capital”.

    For those starting their own ventures, Baxter sees the word ‘innovation’ as being a barrier in itself.
    “The entrepreneurs I back aren’t those who say ‘I’m going to innovate’ but those who say ‘I can see a problem’.”

    While Baxter doesn’t say this, the real challenge lies weaning Australians off property speculation and encouraging investment and risk taking, something that requires major tax and social security reform.

    Sadly, the Turnbull government has abandoned the prospect of any immediate taxation reform and even the Innovation Statement’s more modest agenda is now in doubt as the nation’s febrile Parliament prepares itself for an early election.

    Baxter’s views, and his optimistic but guarded outlook towards the Innovation Statement reflect the opinion of many of those in the Australian investment community, it would be a shame for the country if the current opportunities are lost for short term political maneuvering.

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  • Legislating for innovation

    Legislating for innovation

    Can bureaucrats define innovation? It seems Australia is about to find out as the country’s regulators struggle to decide what businesses will be eligible for taxation concessions under the government’s Innovation Statement.

    That bureaucrats are tasked to identify what businesses are worthy ‘innovators’ is worrying for those of us who hoped the new Australian Prime Minister would end two decades of managerial complacency.

    Adding to the ‘business as usual’ under the revamped government was a speech by the Minister for Mineral Resources yesterday describing the glowing future of the nation’s resource industry in face of continuing Chinese demand.

    While Josh Frydenberg was delivering that speech to Canberra’s National Press Club, the world’s biggest shipping line, Maersk, reported an 83% drop in profits in the face of slowing global trade and collapsing Chinese commodity demand.

    Australia’s long term economic policy of riding on the back of a never ending Chinese resources boom is looking shaky, and the luxury of a tax system that favours property speculation over productive investment is increasingly looking unsustainable.

    Rather than looking at ways to define ‘innovative’ companies, Australian governments would be better served levelling the playing field to attract investment into new businesses, inventions and productive infrastructure.

    Just as a narrow group of tech startups are important so is investment into new plant and equipment for agriculture, manufacturing and tourism. Encouraging workers to attain new skills should also be an objective of the tax system, instead of disallowing school fees and book costs.

    The treatment of taxpayers’ education costs versus that of property speculation expenses speaks volumes about the current priorities of the Australian tax system.

    For a government wanting to encourage productive, employment generating investment and building a first world economy that’s competitive in the 21st Century, the first priority should be to put all forms of investments on the same footing.

    Asking a committee of well meaning bureaucrats to create an artificial group of ‘innovative businesses’ seems unlikely to help Australian workers and businesses meet the challenges of a digital century.

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  • Australia’s missing technology leadership

    Australia’s missing technology leadership

    This morning Cisco announced its latest global innovation centre in Sydney focusing on what it describes as Australia’s strengths in agriculture, resources and smartcities.

    Along with with Cisco’s commitment to support the Sydney centre to the tune of 15 million Australian dollars and invest in local IoT businesses the project promises to bring together the data resources and skills of the University of New South Wales’ Engineering faculty, the Data 61 research agency and various state government departments.

    Cisco’s launch though comes at a difficult time for the Australian scientific and research communities as just last week the national research agency, the CSIRO, launched another wave 0f job cuts immediately after restructuring the sector and even the location of the announcement is being sold off to property developers as the state government sees real estate ventures trumping technology investments.

    Governments go missing

    Even more telling during Cisco’s announcement was the poor presence by governments and corporate partners, the New South Wales state government at least sent along a minister and his Departmental head but the Federal government, despite its much heralded Innovation Agenda, was nowhere to be seen.

    That lack of Federal government support is telling, particularly given regional and rural development is supposedly a priority of the current administration. An informed observer may be forgiven for thinking 21st Century technology investment would assist even the 1950s inspired project to develop Australia’s sparsely populated north but one supposes that grand vision extends to dams and highways.

    The missing corporate links

    Probably the most troubling omission is that of telecoms providers, agricultural and  resources businesses utilising the Internet of Things or M2M technologies need connectivity and the absence of either Telstra or the flailing government owned National Broadband Network means an important piece is missing from the push to connect these industries.

    Once again both Optus and Vodafone – the latter probably having the best global M2M capacity of any provider – miss an opportunity to position themselves as an alternative provider to Telstra which proves whingeing about competition in the Australian market is a damn sight easier than putting some money down.

    Notably missing as well is support from Australia’s corporate sector. While resources giant Woodside is a partner of the Perth centre, there’s little engagement from any other major company. The reply to a question by this writer to the panel about accessing the data held by the large pastoral companies illustrated what little engagement there is from key private sector stakeholders.

    Fighting the innovation bureaucracy

    To be fair to Cisco, these missing links are not the company’s fault and the delay in launching their Sydney centre was due to various shenanigans within Australia’s innovation bureaucracy beyond their control.

    Hopefully Cisco’s Sydney centre will be successful – despite the fine words of Prime Ministers and other politicians Australian industry desperately needs some genuine leadership as the nation realises the safe certainties of the 1990s have passed.

    For the moment though the lack of engagement in the technology industries by political and business leaders is striking. It’s hard not to think the country has regressed back to a smug 1950s view of the view, something not helped by all these events being almost overwhelmingly dominated by white, middle class middle aged men.

    It’s time for Australia to start thinking differently. The nation’s business and political leaders can’t expect multinational corporations to drag the nation into the 21st Century.

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