Azure Revolution
Posted: February 14, 2012 Filed under: Strategies, Trends, Technology | Tags: Azure 1 Comment »I’ve now been working with Microsoft ISV and SI partners for three years. I’ve listened to their concerns about the cloud revolution and helped partners to operationalize their strategies. Even revolutions do not happen over night, but are rather multi-year. The Azure cloud revolution is shaping up to being no different in this sense.
Over the past three years I’ve seen a gradual growth in partner knowledge of Azure. Early on only a few early adopters even understood what Azure was. Over the past two years majority of partners have grown to see Azure as an Amazon EC2 competitor and as such a virtual hosting platform, with Windows and SQL pre-installed. Even today only a handful of partner truly understand the transformative nature of the cloud.
Last week I spoke with a Microsoft partner that has a development platform for Azure offering multi-vendor mobile device support. I said that my vision of Azure is services, rather than applications, seamlessly integrating and sharing data. For the end user the experience should be also seamless with a ‘metro’ style interface. As a user I should not be able to tell when my workflow goes from one service to another. This vision requires that the Azure ecosystem offers robust connectors to all the core service offerings and standardized models for integration. Even the leading development platforms lack these connector libraries. I also asked 400 ISVs if they had a data marketplace play; none did. This to me is very telling that most partners fail to understand the true potential of the cloud.
The transition to Azure often is phased. Azure does require recoding for multi-tenancy and SQL Azure. For larger ISVs with sizeable code bases, a rewrite can be a hefty capital cost. Some have opted for an interim hybrid model using virtual hosting, private cloud and public cloud; an ASP model. I recently studied Azure and Amazon pricing models. The common thought is that Amazon is cheaper. This actually NOT true. Cost of compute, bandwidth and storage are pretty much the same for both vendors. Where a difference exists is in relational database pricing. On Azure a partner would subscribe to Azure SQL, where as on Amazon a partner would have to also buy SQL and Server licenses. If the partner migrates their SQL 2008 R2, licenses that have already been depreciated, then this model appears to be very cost effective. However, if the ISV is running a multitenant configuration, they are legally a services provider and should be subscribing to a SPLA license, which is much more expensive than SQL Azure. Even running SQL 2008 R2 separate and only subscribing to compute, Azure makes more sense for compute because of the ecosystem potential it provides. There really is no reason for a partner not to move to Azure. Revolutions are messy and even this revolution will likely take a couple of more years yet to clean up.
As of today the Azure Application Marketplace had 555 results. Most of these applications are stand-a-lone CRM/ERP/Accounting solutions. The cloud is the ultimate ecosystem play and an ecosystem by definition is an ‘environment consisting of all the… components, in a particular area… , within which the… components… interact’. Ecosystem is about interaction and interaction requires integration. The clo9ud revolution is really the INTEGRATION REVOLUTION at its core. Virtual hosting centers have been around for years… nothing new and exiting about them. ISVs architecting their solutions should think about the space that they exist in and what other services their clients are using. We talk about ‘industry solution maps’. You need to see your solution in an industry solution map context to be an active part of the ecosystem… and that is the WORD!
State of the Economy–Feb 2012
Posted: February 3, 2012 Filed under: General | Tags: state of the economy Leave a comment »It has been a while that I’ve addressed the state of the economy. This morning I read the breaking news that the U.S. economy gained 243k jobs in January, far above expectations. The unemployment rate respectively dropped to 8.3%. The old norm was in the 5% range. It may be that the new norm for a generation will be closer to 7%, but slowly we are reaching more reasonable levels.
Unemployment is key to recovery, as it puts money in the consumer pockets and creates demand across the market. Housing stability is also key, as it is still the main driver accumulation of wealth for majority of Americans. I’ve read articles claiming that taxing corporations less will enable them to hire more and grow. I am more of a believer that demand drives growth and demand is created with when money is put in consumer pockets. Growth does NOT precede demand. Growth without demand only serves to create a bubble that will lead to yet another painful market correction.
As the wars are closed down and hundreds of thousands of troops flood back into the domestic job market, the nation needs to have a plan in place. President Obama’s proposed bill to provide grants to employers of post 9/11 veterans is a an election year political move. Rather than increasing debt to place vets in companies artificially, when demand doesn’t exist, we should be focused on spending resources at increasing demand. Blocking the Keystone XL oil pipeline is a terrible decision. The project has environmental risks, but it is also key to national security and economic prosperity through energy independence. The Savannah harbor expansion to accommodate super tankers is vital to economic development in southern states and should be fast tracked to completion.
I’ve written many times that we need to invest into infrastructure that will create jobs and opportunity for decades. Wealth transfer to corporations through grants and tax breaks is a band aid fix and only serves appease lobbyists in a election year. We need bold moves and national projects of significance.
Providing funds to alternative energy industries theoretically speeds up technology development, adoption and drives prices down faster. I believe in free market economy. As gas prices again climb over $4 per gallon, as they are sure to do, alternative energy sources will become cost effective on their own without government intervention. Massive adoption will drive down unit costs and fund further development and competition. I’d love to install solar power to cut my electric bills. In Georgia solar power is something that we have plenty of. As long as breakeven is 15 years plus for that investment, I personally think it is ridiculous. Returns need to be within 5 years and then every house would heat water using solar power. Paying a premium for a hybrid car is also not that interesting, until a gallon costs $4 plus and stays at that level.
On the long term it is all about education, education and education. Without education there is no innovations and without innovation there is no competitiveness. Without the ability to compete and dominate the American dream is lost. The same way that demand needs national infrastructure projects, innovation needs national investment into science and space exploration. Without the arms race and NASA program, where would we be today in terms of technological advances? Building a lunar base or going to Mars seem frivolous, but the journey to those goals is an investment to innovation and future competitiveness. I am not saying that we should make a moon base, just to because, but we do need a lofty national scientific goal that the nation can understand, get behind and take pride in.
As a species we are reaching the limits of what our home planet will sustain. As a species we need to explore our own planetary system and beyond in order to grow. With technology today it takes on average 2.1 hectors of biologically productive land to sustain a single person. The planet has $13.5b hectors of biologically productive land. The world population has already surpassed 7 billion. My daughter, with her third grade math skills, could tell you that just doesn’t add up.
What is in the water at RIM’s Waterloo offices?
Posted: January 27, 2012 Filed under: Strategies, Technology, Trends | Tags: BlackBerry, RIM 1 Comment »I’ve been following the news about the CEO transition at RIM and the comments made by the new CEO Thorsten Heins. Wow… what’s in the water up there, cause those guys are majorly hallucinating.
No need to make major changes, this is not a turn around and we just need to market better. Dude, you have been left behind in the dust any way you package it and you need to make drastic changes to survive.
When you are from a small market that you dominate and you don’t get out much, your view of the world becomes warped. I am guessing that BlackBerry’s market penetration in Waterloo, Canada is close to 90%. When you go down to the local Tim Horton’s for a cup of coffee and everyone is happily using your phone, what other conclusion can you draw.
RIM’s problem is that their OS is well behind iOS, Windows Phone and Android… with zero chance of catching up. The big three are being sucked into a cloud paradigm shift and RIM is still trying to get on par with siliod apps. The only thing that RIM has going for it is BlackBerry Enterprise Server and even that should be rolled into Microsoft Exchange. Pundits have been making comments about MIcrosoft considering purchasing RIM… why? Why would Microsoft buy RIM to compete with Nokia and others at their own dime? Just to get their hands on current enterprise server customer base?
Probably not a popular move, but if I were Thorsten, I’d move BB to Windows Phone and kill on enterprise mail and device management. Nokia kills on design and navigation.
Thorsten… this is your ONLY play. Stop fiddling around and git’er done!
Kinect for Windows
Posted: January 10, 2012 Filed under: Strategies, Technology, Trends | Tags: kinect Leave a comment »A nugget from Balmer’s CES keynote was that Kinect was coming to Windows on Feb 1st. I’ve been thinking about Windows 8 and the need to buy a touch sensitive monitor… not any more. Few, no more dirty fingerprints on the screen! I am still a believer in 3D and Kinect has a huge role to play in that as well. The whole 3D glasses phase was one of the biggest tech cons of this century. What a waste! At the 2006 digital signage conference I already saw a 3D screen by Philips that didn’t require glasses! If you’ve invested into 3D tech in the last year… I am sooo sorry.
Back to Kinect… when Microsoft ISV partners think of their road map I’d explore the user interface possibilities that Kinect offers… gestures and voice commands. It will be interesting to see how Windows, Office and Dynamics product lines will incorporate Kinect. Now we only need a laptop size compatible Kinect device. The current Xbox form factor is a bit bulky for a laptop user. Remember when cameras were not integrated.
Kinect embedded into Windows Phone devices is only logical… Siri what? I see Kinect being a brand like Carl Zeiss camera lenses.
Windows Phone
Posted: January 9, 2012 Filed under: Strategies, Technology, Trends | Tags: Azure, cloud, windows phone Leave a comment »“GORGEOUS,” raves The Huffington Post.
“Best-looking smartphone operating system in the industry,” gushes Slate.
“Far superior to most if not all the Android smartphones,” says TechCrunch.
Or…
‘It’s because, for the time being, Windows Phone just isn’t good enough.’, writes Greg Kumparak.
So which is it? Good enough, not good enough or superior? I guess beauty, to a certain extent, is in the eye of the beholder. Apple fan boys are an emotional bunch and they will find it hard to admit that Windows Phone is on par no matter what Microsoft dishes out. I am a Windows Phone user and sport the HTC Titan device. I have to say that I am very pleased with the device and enjoy its user interface immensely. I remember when I originally moved from Nokia devices to… others. The user experience was so different that the new devices were almost alien. I think there is a bit of that here… enough people have to fall in love with Windows for sustainable inertia to be created in the consumer market.
So what is next for Windows Phone? Are we just waiting for Windows Phone 8 and more features? Are we waiting for the newly released Nokia Lumia 900 to hit the market to provide improved hardware specs? I personally believe that now is the time to focus on advanced cloud services. I’d like to see Microsoft partners (and Microsoft) start anticipating Windows 8 and developing cloud based services that would wow me as a user. We need to break free from the stand alone app centric model and make a clean break.
I recently purchased an xBox. With the metro release xBox now has that Windows 8 look and feel to it. I like to see apps with more integration and data sharing via Azure. I am looking at all the ‘stuff’ on my phone and they are all stand alone apps. The integrated messaging is really the only service that seamlessly meshes data from multiple sources to create higher value for the user. The beauty of the integrated messaging is the fact that is takes multiple services and integrates them all under a single ‘theme’… communication. It just hit me, this is what we need more of! Partners, take top 20 applications in your domain and figure out a way to integrate them user a single ‘theme’.
I have SkyDrive, iCloud, box.net, SharePoint, SharePoint Workspace, mapped drives, third party document management tools, etc. Why not provide a service that integrates all these virtual drives into a single seamless experience. Any one who sends me an invite to share a folder on any service I just link to my service…schweet! Let me set sharing rules/rights, encrypt and digitally sign.
I’d like a service that takes multiple news sources and creates a single seamless news source for me. I recently uploaded Pulse, but it doesn’t integrate… it lists. I don’t want to filter just by source, but also by theme and geographic relevance. I want to integrate free and paid sources. I don’t want just text, but also the images, video clips and any interactive elements. I want to inject local news when I go out of town.
A little bit more obscure, but it would be great to have a service that links all my physical activity counters. My Suunto dive watch has it’s on site. My Polar watch has it’s own site. I had a service for monitoring my eating habits. Nike and others have sites for running, counting steps, etc. How many parameters are there… really. When your doing physical exercise you are either on land, in the water or in the air (yes, sky diving). At the end it is as easy as ABC… airway, breathing and circulation… oxygen intake and pulse. In any element you can only move in a three dimensional space. Why cant all these services just be translated into a single format and reported seamlessly. Why cant all activity be mapped with Bing and shared socially with the integrated People view.
I am also starting use ‘shopping aids’. Local Scout is a great app, but it is not a full experience. I want to be able to make table reservations. I want to buy movie tickets online. I want to see all daily deals and coupons. I want to be able to scan bar codes and compare prices. I want my shopping list to be there… why not even plan my shopping route based on deals, coupons and advertised prices… factoring traffic and fuel consumption. I don’t want to download multiple apps or go from app to app. I want it all in one, seamless and single unified experience.
I read quite a bit. Why do I have to decide between iTunes, Kindle, Nook, etc. All of them have PC and mobile versions for their readers. Why cant I belong to all and also save white papers, audio books, blogs, podcasts, etc. I’d like to make notes and automatically build a bibliography. I’d like to group and categorize my notes Syncing them with OneNote. I’d like read out loud, thesaurus and translation functionality. All of the above exists… so why cant I have it all as single seamless experience.
My wife stores photos on Shutterfly, many of my friends use Picasa and I have photos on all my devices. Pictures service is half way there, but I really need easy integration with third party apps. Panoramic joins would be a great add with meta tagging features.
PLEASE don’t try to differentiate with the look and feel. The form, function and flow should copy Microsoft services. Spotify Windows Phone app is a great example. You know you are in Spotify, but the form, function and flow is the same as with any Microsoft built service.
Rovio – Angry Birds
Posted: January 4, 2012 Filed under: Strategies, Trends | Tags: angry birds, rovio 1 Comment »I spoke to an old colleague about Rovio’s success and today read an article on how much they sold during Christmas this year. The Angry Birds game is perfect in its simplicity. The simple game has an underlying story that can be extrapolated into books, cartoons, merchandise, etc. Absolutely beautiful!
My question is what is the future of Rovio? Is this it? Will Angry Birds carry to be the next Pokemon? Or will Rovio become the next Zynga, with an expanded products portfolio, cookie cuttering the success they have had with the birds? I personally think both are worthy goals.
So for either strategy what would be the exit? If Angry Birds are built into a Pokemon, will they be sold to a Disney and made into a theme park attraction? If Rovio is built into a Zynga, will they go public in a big way… in 2013? Peter Vesterbacka from Rovio said, “Disney is worth $60 billion… that is our goal, and there is no reason we couldn’t build a company that size.” Wow… how do you build a 60 billion dollar valuation with through a game fan base? “We will be the first entertainment brand with a billion fans,” he told T&T magazine. So, a billion fans… ARPU…. ok, I’ll bite. Facebook has 800 million members. Their app doesn’t cost anything and is available for virtually any device known to man. “That target sounds like a lot, but we are growing faster than Facebook…’, says Peter. I wont argue with the growth speed, but I might argue with the theoretical market saturation point. Groupon grew faster than anything before and they have hit their glass roof. Pokemon has been hit with Digimon, Bakugan, Beyblade, Yugioh, Skyliners, etc. Even Star Wars is now in on the card collecting action. Don’t think that Angry Birds has blocked the critter catapult gaming market. Just as a few examples… Battlewagon, Crush The Castle, Siege Mover, Sand Castle, Ninja Dogs, Sieger, etc. Granted that all of the above have no character story to expand upon, but my point is that it would not take much to come up with something similar.
So where is the big differentiator? I think its Peter and the team… the company’s greatest assets. They have played the marketing/sales game very well. I have always been a big critic of Finnish marketing acumen, but you could write a book on Angry Birds and that would be the new benchmark globally. Hitting one billion fans doesn’t happen over night and requires years of commitment and continuous innovation… plus luck. Let’s hope the team at Rovio have the stamina for the long haul and don’t get lazy with their newly EARNED wealth.
Noise About RIM
Posted: December 21, 2011 Filed under: Strategies, Technology, Trends | Tags: RIM Leave a comment »What’s up? RIM has come down from its glory days to costing next to nothing. Device innovation has stifled. The BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) is the piece that is still worth something and the client base it has in the prosumer market.
There were rumors about Amazon making a bid for RIM. A logical paring, as RIM doesn’t have a cloud and Amazon does. Amazon could also vitalize RIMs consumer business. Then again the leap from where RIM is today to being competitive makes me wonder.
The other option is a Microsoft/Nokia purchase. It would take a player out of the game. Windows Phone 8 interface to BES would be competitive. The BES user base would give Microsoft’s phone business an additional prosumer boost.Throw BES on Azure. So what is in it for Nokia? Unless Nokia was the buyer and would add BES to its Windows Phone differentiators. BES would give Nokia a much needed boost in the North American market.
It boils down to RIM’s owners understanding that the music has stopped and they need to make some decisions. Whatever happens the fact remains that alone RIM is dead.
Apple’s Cloud Strategy Starting to Find Shape
Posted: December 19, 2011 Filed under: Strategies, Technology, Trends | Tags: apple Leave a comment »I’ve written many times that Apple’s iCloud today is really just a virtual repository for media. Apple products of different form factors access content universally, but we’ve not seen any real cloud applications that would have cross functional work flow and/or data sharing/refinement. We are not seeing the partner pool tap into Apple’s core services.
Apple today has over 500,000 partner applications available. Again, I would not call it a ecosystem, since in the classical sense of ecosystem, the members of that ecosystem interact with each other in some way. Currently that interaction is limited to media sharing. Apple’s core services are weak and not open to partners to integrate with and add value to. The core pillars of any ecosystem are unified communications, search, maps and productivity tools. The more the alpha vendor opens their APIs for partners to build on, the stronger the ecosystem will be.
Siri is a bright spark in Apple’s core services toolkit and there are rumors that Apple will offer an API down the road, but not today. Siri clearly differentiates Apple in the search space. Maps & Compass is really Google Maps and provides little differentiation from an ecosystem stand point. iChat, iMessage, iMail, etc. are behind the curve and offer little ecosystem value. iWorks is so far behind competition that it too offers nothing for partners.
Apple will likely come out with an innovate iTV concept. The TV sets will be way more expensive than other solutions and I predict will have a hard time competing with lower cost sets coupled with advanced gaming/media consoles. The Apple product family is purely geared around media consumption and that is where it is likely to stay.
State of the Economy: December 2011
Posted: December 9, 2011 Filed under: General, Trends | Tags: Economy, EU Leave a comment »Its been a while since I wrote on the economy. From where I sit the US economy has stabilized and are growing in strength. Consumer confidence and spending is back. Large corporations are still making good profits. The only big minus, is congressional inability to decide on anything at all. I don’t see congress being able to get anything meaningful done before the nation votes either for a new President or gives the current President’s policies a vote of approval. Until then we could just send congress home to their states and save tax payers money.
EU had a major economic conference last night and it was a total disaster. In my opinion EU was destroyed for good when Germany, France and Italy retained a veto, while scrapping the need for full consent of all members of emergency fund decisions, ending any equality between member states. Imagine the United States with California, Texas and New York having a veto in congress. I think we would start to hear about secession plans very quickly. The fact that the UK was totally isolated from the EU also doesn’t speak well for the future of the union. Imagine having Florida sidelined from the union.
What I think will happen is that we will see the monetary union first down sized to fiscally healthy members. Without monetary union the economic differences between nations in the political union will grow out of control, which will force the better performing nations to limit free movement of labor across boarders. Then goes Schengen. Once we dismantle Schengen, the union is gone. With time we will only have a union between France, Germany and Italy, with a handful of smaller countries, as second class citizens.
Going back to the US, the reason why the United States is starting to rebound is due to the unprecedented level of monetary intervention by the Federal Reserve. Yes, there will be commissions and blaming, because the trillions of dollars spent and the national debt are hard for the nations collective psyche to accept, but the fact is that without bold decisive action we would be facing the same crisis as Europe. The difference being that the EU doesn’t have the collective will to take unprecedented action and thus will ultimately fail. Could the monetary intervention have been handled differently… absolutely. And that is why congress will be having hearings for years. In a society with this degree of political power wielded by special interest groups, you will always see in any big policy change morally questionable transfer of wealth. We need to remember that all sectors of American industry operate under the economic principle of maximizing share holder value. The current execution of that principle is short term and we need to get back to a long term mindset, but that change in mindset will take a generation. Universities need to be teaching economics students about long term shareholder value creation and grinding it into their thinking. We balk at C-level greed, but as a nation of shareholders that is what we’ve asked of them, what we incentivize them on and how we have our universities educate them.
Like with everything else, the future is in our youth. We need to instill healthy principles of frugality, equality, hard work and ethics in to our youth, so when they grow to lead our nation they will make better decisions than we have.
The Cloud Evolution and Hardware Manufacturers
Posted: December 5, 2011 Filed under: Strategies, Technology, Trends | Tags: cloud, television 1 Comment »Just this past weekend I had a discussion about how the cloud would impact cable/wireless operators and TV screen manufacturers. I believe that what happened in the smart phone space will happen with regards to TV manufacturers. Cable will ultimately loose their content business to Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Google. Cable will be reduced to selling bandwidth and consumers will buy content (music, movies, games and applications) through media centers and gaming consoles. The TV manufacturers are trying to take a piece of the pie, by locking down internet access on the devices and only allowing access to certain services, like Netflix, with whom they have an ‘arrangement’.
How many of you buy content from your wireless carrier? How many of you rely on HTC, Samsung or LG for your content? What sets Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Google apart is that a) they have software companies at heart, b) they have core applications of their own and c) they have existing content partner ecosystems. What further sets Microsoft apart from Apple is that Microsoft is backed up by their own cloud. Cloud is important in this equation, since it allows all form factors to access, share and contribute to common content. In the future we will see more integration between cloud services, which will ultimately set clouds apart.
Pure hardware manufactures lack the pedigree, cloud and partner ecosystem to benefit from content sales. Unless they forge alliances and share. I recently purchased a application for my Windows Phone and billing is through my wireless carrier. This is an example of a symbiotic relationship between carrier and content vendor. If I was at Vizio, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, etc. I’d form a software services group, who would be tasked with developing a portfolio of cloud based services for optimizing the TV viewing experience and expanding on that experience. TV manufacturers are the ultimate experts on viewing experiences. I’d sell those services through existing cloud ecosystems and their home media center and gaming consoles. I would allow those applications to function on any manufacturers television, but with premium features only supported by my devices.
This same model applies to Nokia and its role in the Microsoft ecosystem. For higher ARPU Nokia needs to be in the services and content business, but that should happen through the existing market places and communities. Nokia can differentiate especially through geo location based services. Those services should run on every Windows Phone device, but premium features only on Nokia devices.
If we all agree that cloud is all about ecosystem and we all agree that the future is in cloud based services and content distribution, then television manufacturers need to figure out quickly what their cloud ecosystem strategy is and how they intend to play.
