Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: Internet

  • For God’s sake get a website

    For God’s sake get a website

    The annual MYOB Business Monitor was released earlier this week with the depressing news that half of the Australian businesses surveyed didn’t have a basic website.

    MYOB’s survey reinforced the finding of PayPal’s Digital Literacy Report a week earlier that found only 34% of Australian small businesses list their contact details online.

    This is madness – over a decade ago consumers moved online and now with the mobile internet any business without a website is almost invisible in the marketplace.

    What is really dispiriting about these reports is that listing with the various online services and setting up a website is not hard, at worst it should take half a day for a simple site and to complete Google Places, Facebook and Yellow Pages listings.

    The easiest way to create a website is to setup a free Blogger page, it takes about twenty minutes and is more than adequate if you just need a site that lists your services, location, contact details and phone number.

    While Blogger is good for the basics, it does run the risk of locking a growing business into Google’s walled garden which is why WordPress is the better alternative for more advanced companies or proprietors.

    Most readers of this site already know how important an online presence is for any organisation, but it’s almost certain that everyone knows a business owner who doesn’t have a website.

    If one of those business owners is someone close to you, then the best thing you can do for them is to sit down with them and setup their basic online presence.

    Unless you think it’s time they went out of business. In which case you won’t have to wait long.

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  • Intel’s challenge to find a new message and market

    Intel’s challenge to find a new message and market

    Twenty years ago people cared about the specifications of their computers and chip maker Intel led the industry with its marketing of 486, Pentiums, Pentium Duos and Pentium IIs.

    As we come to the end of the PC era, the consumerisation of technology and the rise of cloud computing mean customers no longer care about what’s inside their systems and Intel is struggling to find a new message.

    Over the last few months Intel have been showing off their latest range of Central Processing Units (CPUs) to enterprise and small to medium business (SMB) groups. Last week the company hosted an SMB event in Sydney that illustrated how Intel is struggling to cut through the market.

    Speaking at the event was Steph Hinds – an evangelist for cloud computing – who told the story of how her Growthwise accounting practice was flooding out during storms.

    Because her systems were on the cloud Steph and her staff were able to work from home and local cafes while the landlord fixed her offices. Had Growthwise been using a server based system the business would have been crippled while her IT people implemented a disaster recovery plan.

    Steph’s story in itself illustrated the Clean, Well Lighted Place argument for cloud computing and also showed how Intel is struggling to sell its PC and server upgrade cycle message in an era where that business model is dead.

    This didn’t stop some of the other speakers at the small business event trying to sell the idea that upgrading computer systems and retaining an IT support company were essential to small business success but it’s a message that was valid a decade ago.

    For Intel the challenge is to find a new message – it may well be that the company’s future lies in supplying the powerful CPUs that run data centres, or maybe the low energy and maintenance chips required to control the billions of intelligent devices that will run the internet of everything.

    The company’s launch of their Galileo board – a tiny computer designed to compete in the intelligent devices market with the likes of the Raspberry Pi – is a step in the latter direction and shows Intel is exploring the possibilities.

    Wherever Intel’s future lies, it doesn’t lie in trying to sell a business model that is quickly going the way of the Brontosaurus.

    During most of the PC era, it was the Wintel partnership that dominated the computer industry, now Microsoft have realised this fundamental market change and started their journey to become a devices and services company.

    The challenge now lies with Intel to decide where their journey will take them in a post PC world.

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  • Finding the smart money

    Finding the smart money

    Around the world startup communities are working to connect with local investors, in Sydney and London two groups are showing how it is done.

    “We’re looking at turning idle money into start money,” is the aim of Sydney AngelEd says one of its founders, Ian Gardner.

    Fitting startup companies’ capital needs into the established criteria of investment managers is an ongoing problem that AngelEd’s founders want to resolve. “We see startups becoming an asset class,” says Gardiner.

    AngelEd, to be held on November 7, aims to educate high wealth investors and asset managers on understand the risk, benefits and hype around angel investment, particularly in tech companies.

    The global search for funds

    Startups around the world are struggling to engage with investors – in London, the local tech community has set up City Meets Tech to introduce British investors to high growth companies.

    London should have an advantage in this field given its leading role in the global finance industry, however the challenge for the tech community is to find financiers who are prepared to accept higher levels of risk than mainstream investments.

    “The City is generally risk adverse and doesn’t understand tech and tech start-ups,” says the City Meets Tech website, “though really it’s about understanding the business and managing risk though unfortunately innovation requires at least some risk.”

    Australia’s trillion dollar superannuation system should similarly give Sydney an opportunity that to become a global centre however it suffers from a similar, if not worse, conservative investment culture to London’s.

    Turning Sydney into a global finance centre has been an objective successive state and Federal governments for twenty years but the sleepy, comfortable and risk averse culture of Australian fund managers offers little to attract foreign investors or companies.

    Much of Australia’s is problem is the insular nature of local fund managers with all but a tiny part of the nation’s retirement savings being put into the top local stocks, listed property funds or domestic infrastructure projects that are notable for their lousy returns and extortionate management fees.

    Breaking that mentality is going to be the key to both AngelEd and the Sydney’s success as a financial centre.’

    Competing with the world

    While London and Sydney are struggling with the challenges of encouraging investors into the high growth sectors, cities like Singapore and New York are developing investor communities that are attracting entrepreneurs to their cities.

    Many governments dream of being the next Silicon Valley and while it isn’t likely anyone can recreate the circumstances that led to Northern California becoming the computer industry’s world centre , a vibrant and accessible capital market will be necessary for any place hoping to be a global cnetre.

    For Sydney and London, the success of initiatives like AngelEd and City Meets Tech may be critical for both centres’ future in the global digital economy.

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  • Microsoft’s devices and services strategy starts taking shape with the Surface tablet

    Microsoft’s devices and services strategy starts taking shape with the Surface tablet

    Microsoft’s latest version of their Surface tablet computer is the company’s first attempt at executing Steve Ballmer’s device and services strategy. If the company succeeds, there are some interesting implications for the tablet computer market.

    Currently Microsoft is on a worldwide PR campaign to promote their latest range of Surface tablet computers. Last week during the Sydney leg of their tour I had the opportunity for a hands on demonstration of the new devices with Jack Cowett of the product’s marketing team.

    The Surface itself is an interesting device with some major upgrades and changes as Microsoft begins to understand the tablet market with the device having more memory, better processors and battery life – although the lack of a cellular version is going to hinder its adoption by the consumer and small business markets.

    Devices and services

    It’s in the device’s integration with Microsoft’s cloud and communication services where the long term vision, and real story behind the Surface lies.

    Most obvious is the bundling of services with purchasers of a Microsoft Surface 2 or Surface Pro getting 200Gb of Sky Drive storage and a year’s free international calls included with the device.

    It’s an early taste of how Microsoft can combine services and devices that leverage off their existing position in the marketplace.

    While these incentives may not be enough to convince customers that the Windows systems are a better buy than Android or Apple devices, integrating these cloud services makes the computers more powerful devices.

    Keyboards as blades

    Equally interesting with the Surface, is Microsoft’s devices play with the range of Surface covers that the company is informally calling ‘blades’ – an unfortunate choice of name which will confuse conversations with many IT managers.

    Blade covers for Microsoft surface tablets
    Blade covers for Microsoft surface tablets

    These covers dispense with the usual keyboard electronic layout with an underlying layout featuring a 1024 sensor pad that give the covers more potential than just being keyboards.

    As part of the Microsoft marketing push to show this aspect off, the company has released a blade cover with a sound mixer layout and seeded the devices with various DJs under the banner of the Remix Project.

    While the blade covers have applications as sound mixers and keyboards, the number and  flexible nature of the 1080 built in sensors will see their application in other areas.

    The way businesses have used tablet computers has taken manufacturers by surprise as  Google’s Eric Schmidt told last week’s Gartner conference and Microsoft’s devices open up more industrial applications.

    Already the medical industry is applying Windows based tablets as Microsoft are proud to show off.

    Should third party developers be able to develop their own skins for Surface blade covers then Microsoft may have a killer industrial device that plugs into existing Windows based networks.

    Added to Microsoft’s opportunity is the possibility of plugging Surface devices into the internet of everything giving business users direct access to the machines in their organisation.

    Should Microsoft be able to capture a slice of these markets, it may well be a pointer for the company’s future in a post-PC world.

    Regardless of how well Microsoft do with the internet of everything, the latest range of Surface tablets and accessories shows how the company is executing its strategy of becoming a devices and services company.

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  • Valuing Twitter

    Valuing Twitter

    Now microblogging service Twitter has released documents ahead of a stock market float, it’s possible to start looking at the viability and stock market valuation of the company.

    When Facebook’s float was first mooted in early 2011, we looked at how the social media service stacked up against Google a decade earlier. The question was ‘is Facebook worth $50 billion?’

    The stockmarket answer was resounding ‘yes’ despite an initial fall that saw investors face a 50% loss in the early days of Facebook being a public company. Today the stock has a market valuation of $122 billion, with an eye popping price/earnings ratio of 122.

    So how does Twitter stack up at the valuations being discussed? Quite well it appears when we put it against Google, Facebook and LinkedIn.

    Company Google Facebook LinkedIn Twitter
    Market Cap 288 123 27 13
    P/E 25 288 901 29

    For Twitter, the real challenge is making money from the service and their latest idea is marketing the service as an essential companion to watching TV.

    The discussion over how Twitter makes money exposes another problem for the service in it has no obvious revenue stream which makes comparing the platform to Facebook or LinkedIn rather problematic.

    Facebook has advertising while LinkedIn has premium subscriber services both of which are problematic.

    Not having an obvious revenue model may not turn out to be a problem – as LinkedIn’s P/E shows – and Twitter’s founders are probably more likely than anyway to be the digital media industry’s David Sarnoff.

    It may be Twitter makes its money from giving advertisers, marketers and others access to the massive stores of data the company is accumulating.

    Whatever way it turns out, Twitter’s going to be the hot IPO news for the tech industry for the rest of the year. At current prices, the investors will be lining up to buy the stock.

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