The Internet’s cold war

Jan 262012
 
the internet is seeing online empires develop

“We’re designing exclusively for Android devices,” the software developer confided over a beer, “we don’t like the idea of giving Apple 30% of our income.”

That one business owner is making a choice that software developers, newpaper chains, school text book publishers and many other fields are going to have to make in the next year – which camp are they going to join in the Internet’s cold war.

As the web matures, we’re seeing four big empires develop – Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon which are going to demand organisations and consumers make a choice on who they will align with.

That decision is going to be painful for a lot of business; each empire is going to take a cut in one way or another with Apple’s iStore charges being the most obvious.

For those who choose to go the non-aligned path – develop in HTML5 and other open web standards things will be rocky and sometimes tough. At least those on the open net won’t have to contend with a “business partner” whose objectives may often be different to their own.

Over time, we’ll see the winners and losers but for the moment businesses, particularly big corporations and publishers should have no doubt that the choices they make today on things as seemingly trivial things like reader comments may have serious ramifications in a few years time.

Consumers aren’t immune from this either; those purchases through iTunes, Amazon or Google are often locked to that service for a reason.

Probably the development that we should watch closest right now is Apple’s push into education publishing; those governments, universities and schools that lock into the iPad platform are making a commitment on behalf of tax payers, faculty and students that will affect all of them for many years.

For many, it might be worthwhile hedging the bets and sticking to open standards. A decision to join one or two of the big Internet empires is something that shouldn’t be made lightly.

Similar posts:

Book review: The Information Diet

Jan 252012
 
how are we dealing with the information tidal wave

How do we deal with our information overloadWe all know a diet of fast food can cause obesity, but can consuming junk information damage our mental fitness and critical faculties?

In The Information Diet, Clay A. Johnson builds the case for being more selective in what we read, watch and listen to. In it, Clay describes how we have reached the stage of intellectual obesity, what constitutes a poor diet and suggests strategies to improve the quality of the information we consume.

The Information Diet is based upon a simple premise, that just as balanced food diet is important for physical health so too is a diverse intake of news and information necessary for a healthy understanding of the world.

Clay A. Johnson came to this view after seeing a protestor holding up a placard reading “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.” Could an unbalanced information diet cause a kind of intellectual obesity that warps otherwise intelligent peoples’ perspectives?

The analogy is well explored by Clay as he looks at how we can go about creating a form of “infoveganism” that favours selecting information that comes as close from the source as possible

Just as fast food replaces fibre and nutrients with fat, sugars and salt to appeal to our tastes, media organisations process information to appeal to our own perceived biases and beliefs.

Clay doesn’t just accuse the right wing of politics in this – he is as scathing of those who consider the DailyKos, Huffington Post or Keith Olbermann as their primary sources as those who do likewise with Fox News or Bill O’Reilly.

The rise of opinion driven media – something that pre-dates the web – has been because the industrial production of processed information is quicker and more profitable that the higher cost, slower alternatives; which is the same reason for the rise of the fast food industry.

For society, this has meant our political discourse has become flabbier as voters base decisions and opinions upon information that has had the facts and reality processed out of it in an attempt to attract eyeballs and paying advertisers.

In many ways, Clay has identified the fundamental problem facing mass media today; as the advertising driven model requires viewers’ and readers’ attention, producers and editors are forced to become more sensationalist and selective. This in turn is damaging the credibility of these outlets.

Unspoken in Clay’s book is the challenge for traditional media –their processing of information has long since stopped adding value and now strips out the useful data, at best dumbing down the news into a “he said, she said” argument and at worse deliberately distorting events to attract an audience.

While traditional media is suffering from its own “filter failure”, the new media information empires of Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon are developing even stronger feedback loops as our own friends on social media filter the news rather than a newsroom editor or producer.

As our primary sources of information have become more filtered and processed, societal and political structures have themselves become flabby and obese. Clay describes how the skills required to be elected in such a system almost certainly exclude those best suited to lead a diverse democracy and economy.

Clay’s strategies for improving the quality of the information we consume are basic, obvious and clever. The book is a valuable look at how we can equip ourselves to deal with the flood of data we call have to deal with every day.

Probably the most important message from The Information Diet is that we need to identify our biases, challenge our beliefs and look outside the boxes we’ve chosen for ourselves. Doing that will help us deal with the opportunities of the 21st Century.

Clay A. Johnson’s The Information Diet is published by O’Reilly. A complimentary copy was provided as part of the publisher’s blogger review program.

Similar posts:

The end of the PC era

Jan 172012
 
should you throw out your computer equipment

This morning a graph appeared on the web from analytics site Asymco showing the stalling of PC sales and the rapid catch up of Android and Apple iOS systems.

Such graphs starkly illustrate how the industry is changing as people start using tablet and smartphones instead of their PCs but there are some caveats with making blanket comments about the death of the Windows based computer.

Sales are still huge

One important thing about the chart shown is it has a logrithmic scale – a doubling in height indicates ten times the sales.

That point alone shows just how massive the lead Windows had over 15 years from the mid-1990s, something that is shown in a previous Asymco chart.

Despite Gartner’s reported 1.4% fall in PC sales – the basis of the Asymco graphs – there are still 92 million personal computers sold each quarter so it is still a massive market.

Tethered devices

One of the weaknesses with smartphones and tablet computers is they are still tethered to the desktop. If you want to get the best experience from your phone or iPad you have to synch it with your home or office computer.

For the moment that’s going to continue for most users, but not forever and the extended life of PCs means customers are using older computers to connect.

Extended life cycles

A bigger problem for the PC manufacturers is the extended life cycle of personal computers.

Since the failure of Microsoft Vista, PC users have been weaned off the idea of replacing computers every three to five years and nearly half the market is using systems that are more than ten years old.

On its own that indicates fundamental problems with the Windows and PC markets for Microsoft and their manufacturing partners.

The irrelevant operating system

One of the effects of increased computer life cycles is that the operating system has become irrelevant. Customers no longer care about what they are using as long as it works.

This is one of Microsoft’s problems; the virus epidemic of last decade and various clunky versions of Windows Phones has left customers perceiving PC and Windows software as being clunky and buggy.

Not yet dead

While the PC market is now shrinking, it’s far from dead. There’s still a huge demand to cater for although the big growth days are over.

For manufacturers whose business model has been based on fighting for market share in a growing sector, they now have a problem. They have to identify profitable niches and generate innovative products.

Unfortunately for the PC industry, the market has moved on. Apple have captured the bulk of the high margin computer sector and the industry’s response of pushing “ultrabooks” to capture the MacBook Air customers isn’t going to resonate with consumers trained to buy cheap systems.

Watching the PC industry over the next five years will be fascinating. Some companies will adapt, others will reinvent themselves and many will fade away as they cling to a declining business model.

Despite the personal computer industry only being 30 years old, it’s already in decline which is something older industries should ponder upon.

Similar posts:

Why the Microsoft Faithful are wrong about Windows Phone

Jan 152012
 
is being late to a market damaging to your business?

Late last year an event organiser recounted how she’d been told to only approaching Microsoft for event sponsorship if the occasion was related to mobile telephony as “all of our marketing budgets are focused on Windows Phone.”

So it wasn’t a surprise to read at the beginning of this year that Microsoft were allocating $200 million for marketing Windows Phone in the US alone.*

The Consumer Electronics Show is the high temple of tech journalism with thousands flying in from around the world to breathlessly report on the latest wide screen gizmo or mobile device

At the 2010 show, 3D television was going to be the big consumer item while at the 2011 event it was going to be Android based tablets that were going to crush the Apple iPad.

Despite the millions of words written and spoken about these products, both flopped. So it was no surprise we were going to see plenty of coverage of Microsoft given the budgets available and it being the last time Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, would give the CES keynote.

Microsoft’s CES publicity blitz kicked off with a rather strange profile of Microsoft’s CEO in BusinessWeek which if anything illustrated the isolation and other worldliness of the company’s senior management.

The PR blitz worked though with Microsoft tying for first place in online mentions during the show according to the analytics company Simply Measured.

After the show the PR love for Microsoft continues with Business Insider having a gorgeous piece about why Windows Phone will succeed and criticising tech blogger Robert Scoble’s view that the mobile market is all about the number of apps available.

Scoble replied on his Google+ page explaining why apps do matter and adding that most of the people he meets hate Windows Phones, the latter point not being the most compelling argument.

The most telling point of Scoble’s though is his quoting Skype’s CEO that they aren’t developing an app for Windows Phone as “the other platforms are more important, so he put his developers on those”.

Microsoft spent 8.5 billion dollars buying Skype and intends to lay out over $200 million promoting Windows Phone. Surely there’s a few bucks somewhere in those numbers to pay for a few developers to get Skype functionality on the new platform.

Since writing this, Robert Scoble has issued a correction from the Skype CEO stating a version is being built for the next version of Windows Phone

The fact Microsoft can’t organise this seems to indicate not all senior executives share the vision for Windows Phone. It’s difficult to image Google or Apple having this sort of public dissent on a key product.

Management issues aside, Microsoft’s real problem are they are late to the mobile party and don’t have anything to gain attention.

There’s nothing wrong about being late to the party – Apple were late to enter the MP3 player, smart phone and tablet markets – but in each case they bought something new that changed the sector and eventually gave them leadership of each sector.

With Windows Phone, there’s so far little evidence Microsoft are going to deliver anything radically new to the sector. With Apple’s iOS and Android dominating, it’s going to be a tough slog for Microsoft and they are going to have to have to carefully spend every cent of that big marketing budget.

At least Microsoft’s PR team is doing a great job, the challenge is for the rest of the organisation to sell it as well.

*As an aside, it’s interesting the author of that article about Microsoft’s marketing budgets boasts how he “been sitting on this information for weeks so that Microsoft can make its big announcement at CES this coming week”. It’s good to know where Paul Thurrott thinks his responsibilities lie – certainly not with his readers.

Similar posts:

Has Google peaked?

Jan 142012
 
suspicious man watching for an interent scam

This article originally appeared in Technology Spectator as Google’s Wavering Trust Presumption.

Google revolutionised the Internet when the service appeared just over a decade ago, the search engine’s clean and reliable results saw it quickly capture two thirds of the market from then competitors like Altavista and Yahoo!.

One of the keys to that success was trust – Google’s users had a fair degree of confidence that the service’s results would be an accurate representation of whatever they were looking for on the web.

With the continuing integration of social media services, local search, paid advertising and travel services into those search results, it’s time to ask whether we can continue to trust what Google delivers us.

Google’s attempt to become a social media service is seeing results being skewed with by Google Plus profiles. Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan yesterday illustrated how Google+ profiles are changing Google’s search results.

One thing that notable in these searches – and Google’s behaviour in enforcing “real names” on its Plus social media service – is the importance of brands and celebrities.

It’s no coincidence in the example Danny Sullivan shows above that typing “Brit” into a Google search comes up with the instant suggestions of Brittany Spears and British Airways.

More troubling is Google’s foray into travel with the purchase of  travel software company ITA. The travel industry site Tnooz recently looked at how searches for flights is now returning results from Google’s own service before the airlines or other travel websites.

Another of Google’s search strengths was the clean interface. When advertising was introduced, most users accepted this was the cost of a free service. Today a search result on Google is cluttered with Google+ suggestions, local business locations, travel results along with the ubiquitious advertising.

Suddenly Google’s search results aren’t looking so good and when you do find them, you can’t be sure they haven’t been skewed by the search engine’s determination to kill Google, Facebook or the online travel industry.

If it were only search and online advertising that Google was tinkering with, we could excuse this as being an innovative company experimenting with new business models in a developing industry, but a bigger problem lies outside its core business.

The purchase of Motorola Mobility – which is still subject to US government approval – changes the game for Google. Motorola Mobility employs 19,000 staff, increasing Google’s headcount by 60%.

Even if Google has only bought Motorola for the patents, closing down or divesting the operations and laying off nearly twenty thousand staff would be a big enough management distraction but there is real possibility though that Google want to make phones.

Google as a phone manufacturer, their previous attempt with the Nexus One wasn’t a great success, creates the problem of channel conflict with its partners who sell mobile phones with the Android operating system installed.

Right now those partners are having great success selling phones through mobile telcommunications companies who desperately want an alternative to the iPhone given they perceive, quite correctly, that Apple is taking their customers and the associated profits.

Apart from Apple the incumbents of the mobile phone industry are failing as Motorola have given up and are selling themselves to Google while Nokia are desperately seeking salvation in the arms of Microsoft.

Microsoft’s failure to take advantage of Google’s missteps is also instructive. Microsoft seem to be unable to capitalise on the conflicts in the mobile handset industry with Windows Phone while their competing search engine, Bing, seems to following Google’s cluttered inferface and anti-competitive practices.

With Microsoft largely out of the way with as an innovative competitor, it has fallen on newer business to challenge Google.

In social media we clearly have Facebook and Twitter while in phones Apple is by far the biggest and most profitable opponent, something emphasised by Google giving Android away for free.

The biggest question though is who can replace Google in web search, while there are worthy attempts like DuckDuckGo, Blekko and even Microsoft Bing, it’s difficult to see one of these displacing the dominant player right now.

Which isn’t to say it can’t happen; as we see with the examples of Nokia, Motorola and possibly Microsoft, the speed of change in modern business means empires fall quickly.

For Google, the lack of management focus on their core businesses may well cost them dearly in the next few years if web users stop trusting the company’s search results.

Similar posts:

Tightening the screws

Jan 132012
 
How can we save costs using cloud computing and online tools

Google had a big boost this week with Spanish bank BBVA announcing its 110,000 staff will switch to use the cloud based productivity software.

This wouldn’t be good news for Microsoft as their struggle to retain their almost monopoly position in corporate desktop applications and will undoubtedly mean reducing licensing fees and accepting tighter margins on their products.

BBVA’s move is interesting on a number of fronts although there’s a few myths among the trend towards cloud computing services and office productivity.

Cost saving myth

Part of the focus of selling these products is on cost and the head of Google Enterprise apps in Europe, Sebastien Marotte, said that his corporate customers on average achieved cost savings of between 50% and 70%.

The cost aspect is interesting, I’ve posted before about exaggerated claims for cloud computing savings, and Marotte’s statement deserves a closer look.

It’s highly likely the claimed cost savings are based on licensing – the standard Google Apps cost of $50 per user per year is substantially less than even the discounted rates large corporations receive on Microsoft licenses.

While the licensing cost is a serious line item, particularly when you have 110,000 employees, it isn’t the whole story; there’s training, maintenance, disaster recovery, security and a whole range of other issues.

Cloud computing services address a lot of those costs, but nothing like the order of 50 to 70%. In fact, it would be hard to find an enterprise that had the sort of slack in its IT operations to achieve those sort of savings.

In one respect, this is where its disappointing that cloud computing vendors tout those sort of savings – not only does it commoditise their industry but it perpetuates the myth amongst executives that IT staff spend the bulk of their time playing video games.

While there are real savings to be made for businesses switching to cloud computing, any sales person claiming a 50% or greater saving should be asked to justify their claims or shown the door.

Clean slate

Another interesting point with BBVA switching to Google is how the bank wants employees to leave all their old email and data in their old systems. Carmen Herranz, BBVA’s director of innovation, says we “want to start from scratch… don’t want to carry across old behaviours”.

Not migrating data is an interesting move and how BBVA’s users deal with retrieving their contact lists, dealing with existing email conversations and how staff will deal with feature differences like document revision tracking – an area where Microsoft Office outdoes Google Docs.

Internal use only

BBVA are only applying the Google services to internal documents as well which means the bank will be using other software – probably Microsoft Office – for corresponding externally.

This makes it even more unlikely the touted cost savings of 50 to 70% are achievable, and may actually increase support costs while reducing productivity as many customer facing staff will have to deal with two systems.

Having one system for use inside the business and another for external communications seems to be a European trend – before Christmas French company Atos announced it was abolishing email within the company but still using it for outside messages.

Both abolishing email and moving to cloud based office packages are really about improving productivity in a business while cost savings are nice, the main focus on adopting cloud computing – or any other new technology – should be on freeing your staff to do more productive work.

Similar posts:

Blinking

Jan 122012
 
complaint_department_closed

A while back I wrote about leaving customers behind. As a business grows or evolves some customers are left behind.

That’s not to say those customers are wrong or bad, just that they are not the right fit for the long term objectives of your business.

Sometimes those customers are raving fans and passionate patrons are important; if you can meet your clients’ business and emotional needs then you, and your customer, are in a great place.

But not always, sometimes those fans are a boat anchor to your business.

In 1998  Steve Jobs announced he was ditching the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) standard for Mac computers and moving to the USB standard for new computers. Thousands of outraged Mac fans swore they would never buy an Apple computer again.

Henry Ford is quoted as saying if he’d asked 1890s what they wanted, he’d have built a better horse cart rather than a motor car.

Sometimes customers don’t know what they want and sometimes those who do know what they want aren’t the customers you want.

If you have to make that decision, it has to be firm – blinking in the face of opposition doesn’t work. You’ve shown you’ve blinked on one thing and you’ll be blinking on more. You’re now owned by your customers and the most conservative, risk adverse ones at that.

Once you’ve given ownership of your business to your most conservative customers, you’ll have to fight to regain control.

It’s much better to make a calculated, informed decision and go for it  – if you’re right, your business is going to be stronger without those risk adverse and often low margin customers.

A lot of people decided they wouldn’t buy Steve Jobs’ or Henry Ford’s products again. Eventually they did.

Similar posts:

Strategic lessons from a security breach

Dec 302011
 
online and physical security is essential for a business

2011 has been the year of the IT security breach. Big and small organisations around the world ranging from major corporations like Sony through to smaller businesses such as security analysts Stratfor found their customer data released onto the web.

The frustrating this is most of these breaches are avoidable and “hacking” is often giving too much credit for the security used by the targeted companies.

While the ‘hackers’ themselves may be skilled, the compromised organisations are often easy targets as they don’t follow the basic rules of protecting their data.

Standards matter

Customer payment account details are covered by the Payment Cards Industry -Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) operated by the PCI Security Standards Council.

The PCI Security Standards Council helpfully has a range of information sheets for merchants of all sizes and if you are taking payments off the web you should make yourself aware of the basic requirements.

For most businesses, the cardinal rule is not to save customer’s card details. Once the payment is approved, you have no business retaining the client’s credit card or bank account numbers.

In Stratfor’s case, they were almost certainly processing payments manually and credit card details were being saved on customers’ records in case of errors or to make renewals easier.

Call in the professionals

There’s no shortage of payment companies, ranging from PayPal through specialist services like eWay to your own bank’s services. Choose the one that works best for you. If you have no idea, call in someone who does.

One of the arguments for using outsourced services, particularly cloud computing, is how data security is a complex field that requires professional and qualified expertise. The internal systems of Sony, Telstra and Stratfor were not up to the demands placed upon. A professional service is better equipped to deal with these issues.

Size doesn’t matter

A major lesson from the last year’s security breaches is that it’s not just the local shop or garage e-commerce business that is careless with data. Some of the world’s biggest companies and government agencies have been compromised.

If anything, Sony’s experience has shown the double standards at work in the application of security rules; there’s no doubt that had a local computer shop been as thoroughly compromised as Sony were, they would have been shut down on the second breach and the management would have been carted off to jail well before the twelfth.

For the management of Sony, there seems to have been little in the way of sanctions of the people nominally responsible for this incompetence. This has to change both within organisations and by those charged with enforcing the rules.

The lesson for customers is you can’t trust anyone with your data; don’t assume the big corporation is any more secure than the serving staff at your local sandwich shop.

Passwords matter

Every time one of these breaches happen we hear about password security, with “experts” pointing out that some of the subscribers were using passwords like ‘statfor’ or ‘password’.

For customers, this actually makes sense if you can’t trust third parties with your details so specific, disposable passwords for each site should be used. There’s little point in having a complex password if some script kiddie is going to post your login details onto 4Chan.

Naturally your passwords for banking and other critical websites should be very different and far more secure than those you use for sites like Stratfor and the Sony Playstation Network.

Will 2012 be any different?

Given the data embarrassments of 2012 for businesses and government agencies, can we expect lessons to be learned in 2012?

While many businesses are going to learn specific lessons from these breaches, there’s a management cultural problem where any spending on information systems is seen as a cost that has to be minimised.

This cost cutting mentality lies at the core at many organisations’ failure to secure their systems properly and until a more responsible culture develops we’ll continue to see these lapses.

Good managers and business owners who understand the importance of guarding their organisation’s and customer’s data are those who are ahead of their competition. Over time, these folk who will have the competitive advantage.

For customers, the sad lesson is we can’t trust anyone and a layered approach to security along with keeping a close eye on our bank accounts and credit card statements is necessary.

Similar posts:

Culture clash

Dec 192011
 
Do we have a management caste like the mediaeval medici family

There is something fundamentally wrong with AOL’s media business states a Business Insider headline.

What is fundamentally wrong is quite basic to anyone who has owned or managed a business – money.

The problems at AOL illustrate the deep flaws in the “digital sharecropper” business model of putting free or cheap content on the web to harvest online advertising.

Sites like Demand Media and Huffington Post can’t make money from content if too many staff expect to get paid. Chris Anderson illustrated this best in his rebuttal to Malcolm Gladwell’s review of the book “free” where he examined the economics of his GeekDad blog and the work of its manager, Ken;

So here’s the calculus:

  • Wired.com makes good money selling ads on GeekDad (it’s very popular with advertisers)
  • Ken gets a nominal retainer, but has also managed to parlay GeekDad into a book deal and a lifelong dream of being a writer
  • The other contributors largely write for free, although if one of their posts becomes insanely popular they’ll get a few bucks. None of them are doing it for the money, but instead for the fun, audience and satisfaction of writing about something they love and getting read by a lot of people.

It’s almost touching to picture the modern day digital serf touching his flat cap and murmuring “thank you m’lud” on receiving a ha’penny from the lord of the digital manor before scampering back to working on becoming a well read, but unpaid writer.

The business model of the Geek Dad blog or the Huffington Post relies upon these unpaid writers donating their work and time –the digital sharecroppers as described by Jeff Attwood.

Low or free labour is essential to the success of these site, where the bulk of advertising income goes straight to the proprietors this model allows the digital aristocrats – Lord Chris of Wired or Duchess Arianna – to live well as the owners of these online estates.

The business model falls apart when management starts taking a cut of the profits; install a highly paid CEO and management team with their squadrons of Executive Vice Presidents or Group General Managers with the Medici-esque perks and entitlements these folk demand and the profits disappear.

AOL’s problem is it has too many highly paid managers extracting wealth from the company’s cashflow.

This is exactly the same problem print and television media empires have, once the rich rivers of gold allowed them to build up well paid management castes that are now crippling the businesses as revenues can’t support their financial burden.

Over time, online media revenues are improving. As Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker pointed out in 2010 that U.S. consumers spend 28 percent of their media time online, yet in 2010 only 13 percent of ad spending goes to the Internet. As advertisers follow consumers, publishing on the web will become more profitable.

The risk for big media organisations is their money will run out before the digital renaissance arrives and when it does, they may have squandered their natural advantages by shedding quality journalists, experienced sub-editors and good editors in an effort to prop up executive bonuses.

AOL’s management problem is part of a much bigger problem across markets and industries, we can call it managerialism – there are too many highly paid managers getting in the way of the writers, engineers, scientists, artists and tradesman who add real value to their organisations.

Strangely, it may be Chris Anderson’s “free” model that kills the managerial culture as enterprises that can’t afford to pay the workers that create the organisation’s product certainly won’t be able to pay an Executive Vice President’s bonus.

Similar posts:

Quitting our email addiction

Dec 152011
 
how does a business manage email with cloud and social media

This post originally appeared in the Xero Accounting Blog on December 9, 2011.

With 74,000 staff, you’d expect the CEO of French technology company Atos to be buried in email, but Thierry Breton hasn’t sent an electronic mail message for three years.

As the US ABC news service reports, Atos and Breton are implementing a zero email policy for their employees, steering them to use instant messaging and collaboration tools that reduce the need to send attachment heavy messages.

Breton claims only one in ten of the 200 messages his employees receive each day are useful and 18 percent is spam which – given some security companies estimate over 90% of world email traffic is unsolicited messages – shows Atos has a pretty good spam filter.

Email has been one of the main applications of business technology for the last twenty years, so how feasible is it really to move away from the inbox as being the first and last thing you check each day?

Instant Messaging

The ability to send quick messages between computers has been around since they were first networked in the 1950s but consumers and business largely ignored these clunky features until they were made popular in the late 1990s by the web based AOL and MSN Messenger services.

Most business communications platforms like Microsoft Office, Google Apps and  Novell Groupwise have an Instant Messaging (IM) tool built in which can be easily turned on.

None of this is new technology and it’s probably one of the most used business features in the Skype Internet telephone service.

A downside with IMs is they generally demand immediate attention and can distract someone from their work. They also leave detailed logs so don’t for a minute think your rant about a customer or staff member hasn’t been recorded.

Social media

Many of the social media tools have their own built in instant messaging with LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ having their own services with Google’s service offering the Hangouts feature to create impromptu video conferences.

By definition Twitter is an instant messaging service offering both public and private channels. The Yammer platform is a grown up corporate tool that offers all the social media functions for a business environment.

The downside with using social media platforms as mission critical business tools is their reliance on the best efforts of external providers that can raise security and reliability issues.

Wikis

Atos makes specific mention of their company wiki. Simply put, a wiki is a website that can be easily updated by anyone with permission to do so.

It’s possible to lock wikis, restrict access or to undo any changes that aren’t suitable so all the information is controlled and subject to review. These can be run on your own office server or hosted on an outside cloud service.

Wikis are a fantastic tool for building a corporate memory and developing standardised procedures and policies across an organisation.

Collaborative tools

One of the big changes in the modern office is the rise of cloud office software services like Google Docs, Basecamp and – of course –Xero Accounting that allow people to work together on the same files at the same time.

In the past, office software has locked individual documents while one person used them and that aspect alone has probably been responsible for many of the emails spinning around corporate offices.

Another benefit of the new breed of collaborative tools is they make it easy to control documents as all team members are working only one version of a file, meaning there’s no uncertainty of who has the latest version.

External risks

There are some outside risks with some of these services as they are cloud based so Internet access is important and there can be some questions of security and reliability with trusting processes to outside providers.

Email itself is evolving into a cloud based commodity as many businesses move to Gmail or hosted solutions rather than running their own email servers.

If those external risks are a concern, then it is possible to run these services on your own networks although most businesses are comfortable with outsourcing their technology.

Discovery

One of the first things that jumps to mind from a business IT point of view is that moving to a non-email environment reduces the risk of having to provide masses of data in the event of a legal dispute.

Many organisations have been caught out by a “smoking gun” message hidden within the pile of emails sent within an organisation every day.

The reality is that instant messaging, wikis and collaborative tools all leave their own “digital fingerprints” and if anything the non-email platforms may make it harder to hide evidence from a determined investigator.

Outside parties

Atos aren’t banning electronic mail with outside parties though, with a company spokesman quoted saying their goal is focused on internal emails rather than those from outside the company.

This makes sense as email is still a key business communication tool and not using it to talk to suppliers and customers wouldn’t make sense. For most organisations such a ban would make it impossible to send invoices.

Email is a key part of business and probably will continue to be, what we are seeing though is an evolution of how it is used in the workplace as new tools are developed.

The last word goes to Thierry Breton who said when announcing the policy, “We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal lives”. He has a point.

How are you managing your business email and would you abolish it if you could?

Similar posts:

 Older Entries  Newer Entries