keep it real people
A link from Tim O’Reilly on twitter….think this thru and keep it real
In the first ever Cloudcamp that I attended, I made the statement that unless New Zealand got to grips with cloud computing, the 34 000 ICT professionals were in significant trouble.
I also put out the challenge, that Cloud computing represented a huge opportunity for NZ Inc . Cloud computing made our geographic isolation irrelevant, it also represented an opportunity to break our dependence on the primary sector…
Fast forward two years (that Cloudcamp was August 2009), and I couldn’t help but notice three internet articles pointing to the same thing. All from very different sources.
- Firstly Bernard Hickey looked at the economy and said ‘stop borrowing and start retaining our assets’. He shows quite clearly that our Gross Net Income (GNI) is falling.
- Secondly Lance Wiggs wrote up his take on the Nethui. There are 10 points here which i’m going to summarise as ‘things have improved, we have lots of potential to build a knowledge economy, but we have a long ways to go”
- Finally Sir Paul Callaghan spoke at about building sustainable economic growth in New Zealand, in an outstanding presentation he summarily dismissed some long entrenched myths, and challenged NZ build another 100 technology companies (17mins) …and have them STAY New Zealand owned (which circles back to Bernard’s post)…
So my question is…what is going on out there in NZ relating to cloud computing? How are we either planning or actively taking advantage of this opportunity? What more can be done??
PaaS moves on with Cloud Foundry
Yesterday, VMware announced the launch of Cloud Foundry. This is a big step in the evolution of Platform as a Service.
What is profound, is that this allows you to build applications in a private (your data centre), public (Amazon’s or Rackspace’s cloud) or hybrid environment (a combination of both). It scales from your laptop, to the hundreds of servers in the data centre.
Finally Cloud foundry is Open source. This is important to you guys out there because this should in theory allow you federate (or connect) clouds together. The theory being that as you have a known code base and API set, you can readily do this task.
In the cloud space, this is big news. PaaS is going to be the most critical enabler of Cloud applications going forward, but todate the execution on this vision by potential leaders like Microsoft (Azure) and Salesforce.com (force.com) has not quite been there…
For some more coverage of this move check out
Krishnan at Cloudave.com http://www.cloudave.com/11714/vmware-disrupts-paas-space-with-cloud-foundry/
They unwittingly built a massive new revenue stream for Microsoft….
According to Microsoft, OneNote had something like 15 million downloads from Apple ‘s app store to the iPad.
Think this thru. If you are MS, someone else has solved the riddle of how do you get your apps on more devices and to more people. And what is more, you don’t really have to go thru the massive change this disruption has driven, because depending on how much you squint, you are litterally just cutting application code just like you aways did.
Imagine if you could buy one instance of Word, ppt or Excel instead the deplorable bundle that we’ve had for the last 20 years…. Micro payment based growth….
Weird, what the world does sometimes
Is first mover advantage a crock?
I read yet another pack today that was expounding the virtues of first mover advantage. Call me a cynic but I personally think first mover advantage has lost what ever value it ever had. (and some question that!)
Here’s why,
In this instance, the vendor in question was using the hook of first mover advantage as a to sell us more stuff. The problem with that the market they are talking to is
- already fairly mature (where is the first in that)
- has an unclear business model
- and looks like the only folks making money would be them
Hell, the US is about to change it’s Patent laws to the first person to FILE and patent , not the first person to invent the product..
I also think that in the last decade, the speed of change is such that there literally is no window to build customer scale. It also means that technical change, or more appropriately how customers adopt or use technology is moving too rapid for any one player to gain any substantial advantage (take Android vs iPhone).
The last decade has also highlighted that the world is far less predictable than it ever was. Who for saw Apple’s meteoroic rise ? Facebook? Global financial crisis? Being first in this world, actually carving out and product category is so tough….
Call me cynical but it looks to me that the only real advantage a company has these days is execution.
Apple didn’t invent the MP3 player, or the smartphone. Google didn’t invent online advertising or search, what they did was execute better than their competition…
Maybe Telco’s need to go back to basics
Utility services, the dull boring stuff that we all take for granted, are incredibly valuable. We take them for granted.
Initially I was going to title this post “turn it off” , this was based on a converstation with a client who wanted to continue to use the utility service (in this case data networks), just at half the price.
In my meeting with the client, I fronted him. I said to him
“sure, we can give you something for 50% of the price but before you jump think it through. What is the cost of moving to a consumer grade resolution on your business (we’ll get around to you sometime in the future). Or, how much would it cost you if you lost connectivity to your DataCentre?”
Then I drew out a basic network that included all the types of sites that he had, and lead him through the impact of his goal. Maybe i’ll win that argument, maybe i won’t. I suspect after the Christchurch earthquake, and the amazing effort my employer (and other network providers) have made to restore services, this guy might well appreciate the utility.
Same is true of consumers, watching the events unfold and seeing the way that the utility telco services have enabled people to text and call and tweet in this time of crisis puts the value beyond all doubt. As a friend said on my facebook page
“what we do means people can text and watch the Internet to find out their family is ok. I am stoked for Facebook and SMS right now”
I’m proud to be able to do that. Being able to hang your hat on that when asked what you do is meaningful.Profoundly human.
Perhaps the marketing teams in network providers need to get over themselves, leave that confusing value added services stuff alone. Go back to basics, “we provide the infrastructure so you can connect with your people”
Thinking like a 3 year old…
I am continually struck by the way my 3 year old views the world. There is a pureness of insight that we adults have lost.
Example – this morning we were discussing how big she is growing, I was praising her for eating well and sleeping (my world view, what I valued) her responses..
“If I stand on my tippy toes i’ll be bigger…. or I could stand on a stool …. or wear mummy’s high heel shoes”
Profoundly simply solutions to her desire to be bigger….
Then when I got into the office, what was the first thing I noticed? A woman in very high heels, but was still only 5 ft tall…. someone else trying to be bigger (something far from unique) .. as I said before, insightful.
Like every other 3 year old, she challenges our world view with that deeply confronting question “why”.
It can be frustrating, but mainly because it challenges me to communicate ideas to her in ways that relevent… that is have reason… genuine reason. This process of asking why has been adopted by business , but I think we under use in in innovation terms. If you can use the 5 Why’s analysis method to articulate your proposition in words that have meaning to a 3 year old, you probably have a winner… I’ve tried this with some of the stuff we have going on at work, an experience I would recommend.
Finally, thinking like a 3 year old in the actual development of products can have huge benefits. I’m not alone in noticing this, the best performing teams in the marshmallow challenge … are kids her age. Why? (pun intended), because
that none of the kids spend any time jockeying for power. Kids aren’t trained to be CEOs of Spaghetti, Inc. In their world of play, they build successive prototypes, failing fast, laughing and learning along the way.
In other words they checked their egos, worked together, tried things out really quickly and kept on iterating…
We adults have a lot to learn .
Disclaimer : This is not a post on the right or wrong of Wikileaks, this is about the implications on public cloud computing.
Last weeks events around Wikileaks and Amazon are a startling reminder of just how different the public cloud computing model is when it comes to data law and responsibilities.
As i’ve highlighted in the title, to me this clearly shows one of the Achilles heals of cloud computing. Some don’t agree, but those some are mainly based in the USA. See some quotes below
“It’s USA-centric because it’s analyzing a USA-centric issue: U.S. govt cables, a US data host, and US law jurisdiction over that co”
My perspective is international. Here’s how I see it (and this is high level).
- An international organisation chose a US ’tied’ cloud provider to be their IaaS service provider
- Some folks in the government took a disliking to their activities (in this case the content) and reportedly leant on the cloud provider
- The cloud provider stopped providing service.
Now I acknowledge that this is an extreme case, but at its most basic level the same could be true of any international organisation. For example
- I create a company that has a product that attacks a core US industry that has millions or workers and lots of revenue and tax income (Finance, automotive, pharmaceutical, IT, whatever), I choose a US based IaaS provider (because its large and costs the least)
- The industry feels the pinch and lobbies the hell out of the senate (or the house) to do something about it because lots of jobs are on the line etc etc
- The government intervenes, protecting its national interest (and that happens all the time) and has my company terminated from the cloud provider
- It is also possible that they might go after the data (which incidentally violates my national data protection rules ). What then happens to my IP?
I’m not trying to scare monger here. What I am trying to do is point out a few salient facts about the international dimension of cloud computing. Specifically:
1) Cloud computing is an international phenomenon, so many users will take services from a cloud provider who is governed by different laws, politics and sentiment.
2) These users of cloud services operate under different data rules, and what may be legal or commercial or private in their nation could collide with the cloud providers national laws
3) The political machinations of the hosts government whims can have major impacts on the user, industry and trade
4) The concerns voiced over data sovereignty over the last few years are actually valid
To me the Wikileaks case is a clear pointer to greater concerns about data sovereignty within the cloud community and a continued drive towards regionalisation of cloud.
I’ve spent quite some considerable amount of time investigating what makes great companies great. Readers will know that i’ve read a lot of Clayton Christensen, but i’ve also interviewed CEO’s and been fortunate enough to hear some great speakers, or been past great tit-bits via various social media.
Here are the key takeouts that appear to make great companies
- They have great leaders, people who are prepared to make decisions even hard ones, and act
- They have a cause, purpose or set of common belief – wheather that is competitive, aspirational or humanitarian
- They take risks – the culture supports risk taking (ie doesn’t punish it at the very least), and these companies are prepared to do things that make the sharemarket shudder (let go of legacy money streams or beliefs)
- Great companies get the right people on the job and give them the autonomy and support to get the job done – and are prepared to loose today’s key personnell in order to get tomorrow’s business
- To get results you need to free up resources – expecting people who have day jobs and targets to hit to be the agents of change is insane…
- Organisations are conservative – they unknowingly become uniformaty machines systematically erraditcating anything that doesn’t fit with the entrenched model or way of doing things. Middle managers become experts at the ‘considered no’ to new ideas, and its for this reason organisations can’t grow and you hit stall points. Fear typically beats creativity, fear of career limiting moves, punishment or even of fame.
- When it comes to innovation, the more perfect your knowledge, the less attractive the innovation is. If you’re feeling comfortable with an idea, then someone’s already doing it…
- If you are serious about change, you need to invest in it.
- As scary as a seperate spin out is to the CEO, these are about the only proven way to build a new business model.
And now for a collection of my own thoughts
- Companies love a crisis – nothing will happen until it absolutely must – but by then its too late so..
- Business is about momentum – its much easier to make small changes in trajectory than to pull a business out of a nose dive….
- What seems like a big scary decision now, will look small and logical when you look back at it. So get on with it
- In doing this, remember that the people that go you into the current situation, aren’t the ones that will get you out – turkey’s don’t vote for Christmas and neither will they like you telling them that their time has past…
- If you want to do something new, get someone in who has a history of doing that new thing – whether thats dealing with decline, new product growth or product launch…. assuming your capable people can do it is wrong
- Often doing nothing is the absolutely worst case…even going the wrong direction is better because at least you are in motion
And finally, the only thing that really makes a difference is execution. You can collect as much information as you like, get all your best thinkers writing documents till the cows come home… the reality is that the only thing that really matters is executing better ….
The best companies in the world do this better than anyone else
Integrated proposition or trapping
I’ve had several debates with people about vertically integrated, proprietary stacks lately, both at work and personally.
These can be good or evil, but the defining line between this to me at least is whether you the customer are getting a great customer experience AND could move if you want too.
Some examples:
There is an emerging proposition for remote security (door locks)
that some providers are launching. Now taHr intent here is to make you sticky to the service provider..but they are doing this by making it really hard for the average person to move , that is trapping people. This is the evil side.
Another example is apple. I am about to buy another iPhone, I’m doing this knowing that there are now better mobiles coming,
phones with NFC, better battery life etc…. But I have all the apps, I have my house nearly appleified and frankly my kids love the
games… So am I trapped? A little, but happily so because the experience is great.