Category: software

The fight for cloud computing’s sweet spot

An old PC industry was is being re-fought in the cloud. Will the result be different this time.

One of the great market battles of the PC era was the fight between the ‘best of breed’ software designed to do specific jobs well — Lotus 123, WordPerfect, and Harvard Graphics — versus the bundled ‘suites’ led by Microsoft Office.

Bundled suites of programs offered a common platform and cheaper price over buying products individually.

In the case of Microsoft Office, it also helped that the software giant was aggressive in undercutting the market and leveraging the deals it had made with hardware vendors and system integrators.

The winner of that battle was Microsoft as it turned out customers preferred the cheaper price points of the bundled packages and the common software platform made it easier to share data across the applications.

In the cloud computing field that fight is happening again as Zach Nelson, CEO of Netsuite, describes; “I think the next battle is going to be the same battle that happened in the client-server world. Is it the best of breed cloud apps or is it the suite?”

Nelson believes the suite vision will win out, “the suite is going to win again for exactly the same reasons why the suite won in the client-server world — it’s very hard to synchronise data between applications.”

Given Netsuite’s business, as its name suggests, is in providing a suite of software it’s no surprising that Nelson believes their way of doing business will prevail. Those providing ‘best of breed’ stand alone cloud applications naturally disagree.

Chris Ridd, Australian General Manager of accounting service Xero, disagrees with Nelson’s view. “With cloud and open APIs you have the holy grail of interoperability,” Ridd says. “In the 1990s the open systems were too early and didn’t work as well as they do today.”

Ridd also points out that Xero has over 350 add on services, ” I don’t think any suite can deliver that” he says.

History is on Nelson’s side but it may be that in this case history doesn’t repeat as the technology has moved along and now stand alone apps are what the market wants.

Time will tell although its unlikely whichever prevails will have anything like the success and market domination of Microsoft Office during the PC era.

Salesforce faces the end of the database era

Cloud CRM giant Salesforce faces a challenge as searching unstructured data and analytics companies like Splunk change the business model.

Last week we looked at the way we organise information is changing in the face of exploding data volumes.

One of the consequences of the data explosion is that structured databases are beginning to struggle as information sources and business needs are becoming more diverse.

Yesterday, cloud Customer Relationship Management company Salesforce announced their Wave analytics product which the company says “with its schema-free architecture, data no longer has to be pre-sorted or organized in some narrowly defined manner before it can be analyzed.”

The end of the database era

Salesforce’s move is interesting for a company whose success has been based upon structured databases to run its CRM and other services.

What the company’s move could be interpreted that the age of the database is over; that organising data is a fool’s errand as it becomes harder to sort and categorise the information pouring into businesses.

This was the theme at the previous week’s Splunk conference in Las Vegas where the company’s CTO, Todd Papaioannou, told Decoding The New Economy how the world is moving away from structured databases.

“We’re going through a sea change in the analytics space,” Papaioannou said. “What characterised the last thirty years was what I call the ‘schema write’ era; big databases that have a schema where you have to load the data into that schema then transform before you can ask questions of it.”

Breaking the structure

The key with programs like Salesforce and other database driven products like SAP and Oracle is that both the data structures — the schema — and the questions are largely pre-configured. With the unstructured model it’s Google-like queries on the stored data that matters.

For companies like Salesforce this means a fundamental change to their underlying product and possibly their business models as well.

It may well be that Salesforce, a company that defined itself by the ‘No Software’ slogan is now being challenged by the No Database era.

Paul travelled to San Francisco and Las Vegas as a guest of Salesforce and Splunk respectively

One, two, skip a few. Microsoft hopes Windows 10 will save a declining PC market

Will Windows 10 be enough to revitalise Microsoft’s ailing business divisions?

A few days ago I asked if Windows 9 would be Microsoft’s last desktop operating system.

Yesterday the company partially answered the question by announcing the next version will be named Windows 10 which conveniently skips version nine.

Skipping around numbers isn’t unusual for Microsoft, most famously Word skipped from version two to six just to overtake competitor WordPerfect in the late 1990s.

Windows itself has gone 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7 and 8 in the past — that’s without mentioning the Windows NT family — so jumping to Windows 10 doesn’t detract from any logic in the Microsoft’s naming system.

The key point from Microsoft’s announcement is the business focus along with the continuation of Windows 8’s unified experience across PCs, smartphones and games consoles that has proved less than successful.

One area where Microsoft has conceded defeat is in the battle for a Start button with Windows 10, one of the biggest irritants upgrading users found with the new operating system and one of the reasons why many users chose the older Windows 7 software when buying a PC.

How the Start button will work on Windows Phone remains to be seen although Microsoft seem committed to the ‘One Windows’ vision despite its technological and marketplace difficulties.

Another interesting development with the new product is the Windows Insider Program, billed as an ‘open collaborative development effort to change the way Windows is built and delivered’.

Back in the old days this was called a beta program where testers were invited to try out new software to test the product and fine tune user experiences. At least it shows Microsoft are embracing the language, if not the spirit, of the collaborative economy.

Microsoft have released a YouTube video Introducing Windows 10 with Windows Vice President Joe Belfiore outlining the features of the new system.

Whether Windows 10 is enough to shore up the declining fortunes of the company’s Windows division and Joe’s job will be a key question for analysts and industry watchers over the next three years.

The business or your sanity

Minecraft founder Markus Persson gives other tech leaders a lesson in humility

Yesterday Microsoft confirmed the rumours that it would buy Minecraft developer Mojang for 2.5 billion dollars.

Following the announcement, Mojang founder Markus Persson — aka Notch — wrote a touching blog post on his leaving the company he founded.

The business had become too big and the demands of Minecraft’s legion of fans were taking their toll; it was time for Persson to move on to keep his sanity.

“If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.”

For all the hubris we hear from technology company founders and CEOs, it’s those like Persson who probably will end up making the most difference to the world.

 

How Apple will have to think differently about the smartwatch

How Apple will have to think different about the smartwatch

Unsurprisingly the hype ahead of Tuesday’s media announcement by Apple is reaching a crescendo, with the consensus being that a smart watch will be the day’s main announcement.

The constant stream of targeted leaks by Apple to friendly outlets is quite tiring, however one thing that will be fascinating if all the stories are true is the software the device will run.

As Microsoft have discovered, the idea of running the same operating system across all devices just doesn’t work.

While how users interact with the devices will be the main factor, the most immediate problem will be power. If Apple Insider’s report that prototypes need to be recharged twice a day is true, then the limitations of smaller batteries are going to be considerable and software is going to have to be much more stingy with power usage.

The other big challenge for the iWatch, if that’s what it’s called, is the entire global watch market is a tiny fraction of the smartphone industry so expectations Apple’s new product will replace smartphones and tablets as a huge growth driver for the company are probably misguided.

So it’s good for Apple and its acolytes that the iPhone6 will probably be announced as well. If this has the features expected, then its likely to give the company’s slowing smartphone sales a boost.

Regardless of what’s announced on Wednesday, Apple does have the luxury of being one of the most profitable and richest companies on the planet. if a smartwatch is the major new product they have the resources and time to finesse the product and its software.

 

Frenemies in the age of tectonic shifts

In an age where business is changing dramatically it’s worth keeping your rivals close.

“Apple lives in an ecosystem,” Steve Jobs told the 1997 MacWorld conference. “It helps other partners and it needs the help of other partners.”

A few minutes later Jobs unveiled Apple’s deal with Microsoft, much to the disgust of many of the company’s true believers in the audience – something not helped by Bill Gates appearing on video midway through the presentation.

“We have to let go of the idea that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose;” said Jobs after the booing died down.

I was reminded of Jobs’ and Gates’ deal when talking to Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of virtualisation software company VM Ware at their annual VM World conference in San Francisco this week.

Gelsinger was discussing the myriad deals VM Ware has made with companies that are their superficially their rivals as markets radically change. The company has even gone as far to embrace the open source Open Stack that was originally set up as competition to VM Ware’s proprietary technology.

“The idea of frenemies – or co-competition – isn’t new to the IT industry.” Said Gelsinger, “as we are in this period that we’ve called the tectonic shifts that are underway.”

“All of us need to be somewhat careful about who’s our friends and who’s our enemies as we go through that period and be as nice as we can to everybody because who’s our friends and who’s our enemies in six months or twelve months could change a whole lot.”

That lesson has been harsh in the IT industry as various unstoppable businesses have found the market has shifted rapidly against them. A process that’s accelerating as cloud computing changes the software industry.

“I always quip that ten years ago or fifteen years ago Sun would have been buying Oracle. Those shifts can occur quite rapidly,” Gelsinger says.

VM Ware itself is on the brunt of one of those shifts as its core business of creating virtual services in company’s data centres is being disrupted by cloud computing companies like Amazon, Google and – ironically – Microsoft.

Adapting to that changing market is the key task for Gelsinger and VM Ware’s management team, “our philosophy has been about doing the right thing that technology enables us to do.” Gesliner states, “do the right things for our customers and enable the ecosystem to join us on the journey.”

For companies like VM Ware and Microsoft no-one predicted that one of their biggest threats would come from an online book retailer, yet Amazon Web Services has upended the entire software industry.

The challenges for VM Ware today or Apple nearly two decades ago are being repeated in many other industries as competitors appear from unexpected directions, which is why it’s important not to ignore and sometimes co-operate with your competitors.

We shouldn’t also ignore the other main reason why companies like Apple, Microsoft and, possibly, VM Ware have survived massive market shifts over time – a deep and loyal customer base.

Understanding and responding to your customers’ needs is possibly the greatest management skill needed in every business today. Are you listening to what your market is telling you?

Paul travelled to VM World in San Francisco as a guest of VM Ware

Picture of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates via Joi Ito on Flickr

The strength of keeping things simple

Keeping things simple is a strength in today’s complex times.

This week I’m in New York to attend the BlackBerry Security Summit, more of which I’ll write about later although this story for Technology Spectator covers much of the news from the day.

BlackBerry is struggling to find relevance after losing its way when Apple and Android smashed their business model of providing secure, reliable and email friendly phones.

Now in post Snowden world, BlackBerry under new CEO John Chen is looking to rebuild the company’s fortunes on its strengths in security.

One of the aspects Chen’s team is emphasising is the simplicity of their software. Dan Dodge, who heads BlackBerry’s QNX embedded devices division says their operating system has a 100,000 lines of code as opposed to hundreds of millions in Windows and Android.

That weakness in the established software packages is something illustrated in today’s story about a verification problem in Android due to reuse of old code from another older product.

Simplicity is strength is Dodge’s message and that idea could probably be applied to more than software.

In the complex times we live in, simplicity could be the key to success.

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.

ABC Nightlife Computers – The end of Windows XP

Windows XP, the Privacy Act and an Internet Magna Carta are what we’ll be looking at on Tony Delroy’s Nightlife.

Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife across Australia to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

For the March 2014 spot we’ll be looking at the end of Windows XP, Australia’s Privacy Act, the web turning 25 and the call for an Internet Magna Carta.

If you missed the show, you can listen online at the Tony Delroy’s Nightlife homepage.

One of the show’s listeners, Linda, called in about asking for Apple Mac security software; two free products for OsX users are Sophos Home Edition and Avira Free. While Macs are less prone to malware than Windows systems, it’s still a good idea to be protected.

Another listener, Grant, described a problem with his computer which sounds like it’s infected with something. We recommend the free Malwarebytes as the first step to fixing the problem.

The end of Windows XP

After 13 years, Microsoft is retiring Windows XP; what does this mean for those of us still using it, or for our banks who still use it in their ATMs? Some of the questions we’ll cover include;

  • why is Microsoft pulling the pin on Windows XP now?
  • what happens on April 8 when Microsoft stops support?
  • are Windows XP users still protected from viruses?
  • what’s this story about bank ATMs running Windows XP?
  • the web turned 25 last week. Didn’t it turn twenty a year or so back?
  • inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, called for an Internet Magna Carta last week; what does he mean?
  • could such an idea work in today’s globalised world?
  • on similar topic, the new Privacy Act came into effect last week; what does this mean for the average person?

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.

Tell me something I didn’t know

Co-founder and CTO of Sugar CRM, Clint Oram, sees software changing in the way it delivers value to users and customers.

“Tell me something I didn’t know about my customer;” is what Clint Oram demands of his software.

“If you think about legacy of Customer Relationship Management tools it’s really been about entering something I already knew about by customer so my manager can keep track of me.”

Oram sees that changing with Sugar CRM, the open source Customer Relationship Management software company he co-founded in 2004 at a time when the software industry was coming out of the post dot com bust depression.

“There was a huge backlash by customers to the enterprise software market,” Oram remembers. “There were a lot of hopes and promises made of all this fantastic software that would change the world. The reality was a lot of it didn’t do anything.”

Foundations for the cloud

In Oram’s view, that disillusionment formed the basis of today’s cloud based software businesses with the market’s demand that software be delivered as a service, reducing up front commitments to any one product, commercial open source that gave customers a stake in development and annual subscription licensing.

That last factor – a radical change to the traditional software model that saw small businesses buy boxed programs and larger enterprises negotiate complex agreements with expensive implementation projects – is the biggest change to the modern software industry.

Oram sees that as challenging those established giants like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft; “in the past it was ‘here’s my software, goodbye and good luck. Maybe we’ll see you next year.”

“If you look at those names, the competitors we see on a day-to-day basis, several of them are very much challenged in making the shift from perpetual software licensing. It’s been a challenge that I don’t think all of them will work their way through, their business models are too entrenched.”

“Software companies really have to stay focused on continuous innovation to their customers.”

Freemium challenges

From his ten years in business, Oram learned the freemium model is a difficult way to run a business, “we learned that the freemium model is challenging and you gotta really focus on differentiation across your software editions and deliver clear value to each customer segment.”

While the Freemium business model remains a challenge, Oram sees mobile and the cloud as driving the CRM industry with the sector focusing on delivering more customer insights as software increasingly goes mobile and gets better at predicting behaviour.

“We’re taking these cloud, mobile based platforms that can be delivered anywhere and anytime,” says Clint “and now work on collecting that data about your customers and telling you what you should do next.”

“How do you help your customer to get the fullest value out of working with you.”

Delivering value to customers is a challenge not just for the software industry; in an era where business is far more competitive, it’s a question facing all industries.

Microsoft struggles with in car technologies

Microsoft Windows faces further challenges as it loses market share and revenue in the automotive market

As Microsoft prepare for a major launch at this week’s Mobile World Congress, the news isn’t good for the company’s flagship Windows operating system.

Two Bloomberg reports illustrate the problems; the major story is the company is planning to drop licensing fees for Windows 8.1 while the other, still serious, news is that Ford will be dropping Windows as its in-car operating systems.

Automotive systems are one of the key markets for Microsoft as the company tries to move into markets beyond the stagnating personal computer sector and should the reports be true that Ford is looking at moving to the rival Blackberry owned QNX system then Windows Embedded has taken an embarrassing blow in a key market.

More serious though is Bloomberg’s report that Microsoft plans to cut its licensing fees for Windows installed on cheaper devices.

While not unexpected, this will damage the company’s earnings given the Windows division made up 22% of Microsoft’s earnings last year.

It’s clear that the free Android system is beginning to hurt Microsoft both in the smartphone and personal computer markets.

For Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella, dealing with Windows’ place in the new Microsoft is going to be one of his most pressing challenges and will almost certainly define his first year in the role.

As the Internet of Things and Machine to Machine markets grow, Microsoft is going to have quickly decide if the company wants to compete in the market.

Seeing the full picture

Data visualisation service Encompass is an example of finding a business opportunity from a scarring experience.

Being able to make sense of data is one of the challenges of modern business.

In the case of data visualization service Encompass, the business was founded after its founders were caught out by not knowing all the information behind business deal.

The latest Decoding The New Economy video is an interview with Roger Carson and Wayne Johnson, the co-founders of Encompass, a cloud based data visualisation company.

Encompass takes corporate information such as credit information and business registration details and renders it into a form that’s easy to read for salespeople, bankers or anyone doing due diligence on an organisation or individual.

“A lot of it is about bringing the information together and making it usuable and simple to use,” says Wayne. “If you can’t get that information easily and it takes relationships with lawyers to put it all together or your own legal advisor takes a long time to get this together, it’s costly and you may miss things.

Wayne and Roger’s path to starting Encompass came from being caught out in a property deal where it turned out some of the business partners wouldn’t have passed close examination.

“The property venture we went into was not a success,” Roger explains. “If we had known about the people and the properties and the companies involved on the other side of that transaction we probably would not have got involved in it.

“The genesis of this product really came about because we were involved in a transaction where we didn’t have the full picture, we couldn’t get the full information quickly and we therefore realised there had to be a better way for people to look at commercial transactions and get the full picture.”

It’s often said that information is power, but the real power lies in being able to understand the data we’re being flooded with. Encompass are a good example of the new breed of business that’s helping others deal with the masses of information we’re all being inundated with.