Face IT - IESE Technology Blog

Google's latest coup: Google wave!

Today it a busy day! I just had a glimpse at a YouTube video in which Google introduces Google Wave, an integrated communication tool. Seems interesting, so I just wanted to briefly draw your attention to it. Watch it out here!

Lot's of activity in the mobile space!

We have been following recent developments in the mobile space for some time. Since Apple decided to enter the mobile space with the iPhone one could say that the industry has suffered a serious face-lifting, not only due to the iPhone per se (we could spend hours discussing if it's a neat phone or not, if it's useful to business customers or not, etc.), but fact is that in the past two years the mobile phone business has changed tremendously. And part of the trigger has been Apple's proposition of focusing again on what the customer wants when he/she thinks about data: it's all about the Internet. Which implies a lot of things -from a user-friendly multi-touch screen through the possibility of seeing the vast majority of Internet pages to the possibility of targeting content to the needs of the mobile phone user. This is why in this post we want focus what may be the "killer" to get the mobile Internet going: the existence of a good application ecosystem.

When Apple launched the iPhone three years ago, it already emphasized the fact that it was a device that would allow everybody to enjoy the full Internet experience - this was actually nicely taken up by the series of commercials that they run at that time.

A year later, in summer 2008, Apple launched not only its 3G phone, but also a new version of iTunes, which included a for some people long-awaited application store. Since then, the store has carried more than 35.000 application and  reached 1 billion downloads just 9 months later (see also Fortune's post for more information about this).

 

I the past months we've seen that Google, Nokia, RIM, Miscrosoft all have followed Apple's approach of announcing the launch of application stores or "marketplaces". Google was the first to follow, launching its application store Android Market for applications to be run on the Android operating system. Google's approach differs from Apple's as it does not require any formal approval process (which has led to several complaints of iPhone application developers, since they claim that very often Apple takes up to several weeks to react). The Android store publishes any application, but as of today when you visit the store you still cannot find too many applications, although supposedly the developer community is becoming to get quite active. Reseach in Motion  launched its Application World on April 1st, containing more than 100 applications for both business and entertainment. RIM emulates Apple's approach of offering only applications for its own operating system, maintaining the control for publication of applications. This week, Nokia has followed a with the launch of its OVI store. The store carries all sort of applications for around 50 Nokia phones (of around 300Nokia models), and actually pretends to be not only a store, but a central marketplace for all sort of services and products, including music, ringtones, etc. In this sense, Nokia moves away from just being a handset producers to develop a beach head in the broader content and service world. Having said this, the formal launch has been a disaster, although one should expect that the problems that users have reported this week will be resolved soon. Similarly to Apple and RIM, Nokia also controls the publication of applications, but it has introduced an interesting twist in the payment alternatives, since it offers carrier billing (e.g, you pay through your phone bill) for a number of countries. We will have to analyze what this implies for the telecom operators in a future post.

Finally, Microsoft has repeatedly announced its launch of a Mobile Marketplace (initially known under the codename SkyMarket), but up until today the software giant still in mainly focussing on a marketplace for developers (a Windows Mobile Catalog) (an area that is very natural to it, since they have been nurturing their developers for the past 15 years or so), while the frontstore is still missing. Is this a sign of weakness, or is something big to come? 

By the way, next we the traditional yearly Telecom Industry meeting takes place in IESE Madrid, and we will be able to listen to what the protagonists of this post have to say (with Nokia, Microsoft, and application developer and the operators debating about where the mobile Industry is going). You may want to check in, or get the conclusions of the meeting to read more about what's going on.

PD. We haven't focused on the role of operators in this post, simply because most of them are moving very timidly in this vein. France Telcom has launched a store, South Korea Telecom has announced one, but there is not much more to write, with the exception of O2's Litmus store, which want to become a place where developers and final users interact, so giving it a nice web 2.0 twist. Have a look for yourself!

The Natural Act of Telepresence

A few days ago I participated in an online workshop using Cisco Telepresence technology. While of course I had done videoconferencing many times before, this was my first experience with TP. So, here are a few reflections.

First off, a few details on the event itself. The workshop was organized by the Henley Center for Customer Management and hosted by Cisco. Six Telepresence rooms were participating: one in Barcelona, one in New York, one in Bangalore, and three in London. My role was to share some thoughts on the use of social media/Web 2.0 in the enterprise arena, give a quick update on a Cisco-sponsored research project that we’re currently running, and then join a round-table discussion. The interesting part, though, was that I was to co-present with Neil Hair of RIT who was physically located at Cisco’s New York office. And by “co-present” I mean that the two of us were to use the same PowerPoint file (residing on my laptop in Barcelona) and take turns covering various aspects and complementing each other’s points. Given my prior experiences with videoconferencing, I was a bit worried about how smoothly the whole thing would go (there was this one episode when I was in a videoconference and the two folks on the other end were a Welsh and a Scott. Picture this, a Russian, a Welsh, and a Scott trying to strike up a conversation over a video bridge with a really poor audio connection – anecdote material, isn’t it?).

Well, my concerns turned out to be completely unfounded. Co-presenting over Telepresence felt very natural and neither Neil nor I had any problems jumping into the discussion and going back and forth on various issues. The coolest thing was for Neil in New York to call on myself in Barcelona “Next slide please, Evgeny”. Anyways, when I try to think what made the difference in the TP case vs. regular videoconferencing, it probably comes down to audio latency. There is usually this tiny millisecond audio delay, which doesn’t really matter when there is only one person speaking but it is just enough to spoil things when you need to have a free flowing conversation (this is especially true when there is a single person on one end and a group of folks on the other; the poor guy usually has a really hard time drawing attention to him/herself in order to break into the conversation). With TP there was no such delay whatsoever, meaning that the audio was really real-time. This spared Neil and myself from playing the stupid “you go ahead; no, please you go ahead” game and allowed us to co-present in a very relaxed and natural manner.

If there was one thing that bothered me somewhat throughout the presentation, it was the fact that I couldn’t see the audience. I should acknowledge, though, that this was a limitation of the TP configuration in the Barcelona room (see picture on the right) rather than a shortcoming of the technology in general. Our setup included a single screen that would show only one other TP room at a time. So, for most of the time I was able to see Neil in New York (as he was the one doing the talking on the other end) but not the Henley folks in London. This sure made the interaction between the two of us easier, but to me personally the inability to see how the audience responds created this very awkward sensation of speaking in a vacuum.

To sum up, TP sounds like a great idea for this type of collaborative meetings. I suspect, though, that it comes at a significant cost and many firms, especially in the current business environment, would be reluctant to cash out to gain the luxury of the complete “you are there” meeting experience. Nonetheless, according to Forrester, for global organizations TP may deliver the ROI of 47% or more over the five-year horizon. The benefits come primarily through travel and productivity savings, improvements in employees’ quality of life, and reduced carbon footprint. Sure, TP hasn’t yet become a mainstay feature of everyday business life in most organizations. Whether, how, and when the tipping point will occur remains to be seen. But in any case, after my recent experience, I personally am looking forward to it.

Can Oracle Re-launch Sun´s Innovative Capacity?

Oracle’s purchase of Sun is set in the known logic of the large global IT providers’ growth. If an opportunity of this nature arises and the cash is available, pulling off an operation of this type allows a company to broaden its value chain, eliminate competition, gain market share, increase economies of scale, get rid of overlapping products, and reduce and concentrate operations, with the corresponding cost reductions.

It is a process that large technology brands undertake with great regularity, and this is especially true for the four primary global IT providers: HP, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. The latter of these does it the most. Since 2005, Oracle has invested over 35 billion dollars in the acquisition of 50+ technology companies. Their tenacity is also unmatched, as witnessed in their conquering the stubbornly resistant People Soft and Bea Systems.

What makes the result of Sun’s purchase so interesting is the important role that Sun has had as a motor for IT innovation. In 1984, the company launched nothing less than its revolutionary "the network is the computer" concept, aimed at undermining the reigning model based on desktop computers upon which Microsoft had historically based its power. A quarter of a century later, this revolutionary concept has become reality in the form of "Cloud Computing". In these three decades of existence, the Californian company has created products as important as its operating system, Solaris, and the Java language and platform. It has made a decided commitment to open code by launching its own version of the offimatics suite, OpenOffice, and it has bought and promoted the MySQL database.

Some of these products have been ahead of their time and have not been able to reap their full benefits due to Sun’s financial weakness, which has been an anchor since the end of the Internet bubble.

In the case of Java, the story is well known. Faced with this technology’s enormous success, Microsoft tried to undo it, which led to Sun’s eternal legal battle with the software giant. This sapped much of Sun Microsystems’ energy. The progressive conversion of Java to free software helped its popularity, but Sun was never able to amortize its investment.

Given all this, it now remains to be seen whether Oracle, with its major financial muscle, will be willing and able to encourage the innovation capacity that Sun had.

The challenges they will face are many. The company run by Larry Ellison will be very busy restructuring and avoiding overlaps while integrating different corporate cultures without losing clients. This will undoubtedly be a complex and painful process, about which some analysts are predicting between 5000 and 10,000 possible layoffs. In this dance, Oracle will need to be very skilful in order to retain enough Sun talent to ensure the continuity of their extraordinary innovative capacity. The possibility of failure in this aspect cannot be discarded.

The IT market is full of brilliant and promising products that have gone the way of dead ends after being acquired by larger companies. IBM, which was one of the candidates to buy Sun, boasts several such cases. Oracle, for better or worse, is now a giant. The answer, as in the case of "Cloud Computing", is in the clouds.

Business Opportunities in the "Virtual" World

Not long ago, stories about virtual world systems such as Second Life were abundant. However, recently, not much has been said about these systems. New user growth has slowed, and the number of regular users (around a half a million) of the largest system, Second Life, has turned out to be only a fraction of the overall number of registered users. However, these regular users do spend over 30 hours a month on the system, and they have formed a number of small communities, based on individual interests and activities.

Many organizations have experimented with virtual worlds such as Second Life, thinking that their acceptance could be like the broader Internet, which was initially dismissed as an irrelevant toy of geeks in the 1990s (much as many people regard virtual worlds now). If virtual worlds do become popular with the general public, many organizations want to understand the basic tendencies of the systems, and they want to be there when they take off.

Most early business initiatives in Second Life were basically 3-D billboards that were able to gather outside media attention (which was positive), but they were not able to get significant user attention. Businesses found that users were drawn to interaction with other users, not to structures in the background of the world. After recognizing these tendencies, many organizations began experimenting with virtual collaboration-based activities. Existing virtual worlds offer organizations a great opportunity to experiment with virtual relationship building, group meeting, interactive presentation, and training activities. While the outcomes of using a virtual world for these types of activities are still not clear, many organizations are realizing that it is not much of an investment to use an existing virtual world for experimentation, and the lessons learned from these initial experiments may become very valuable as these systems mature and grow.