simondelliott

Get out of Enterprise Google!

If you combine the modern Californian way of talking and a bit of old school religion you get Googles moto

Dont Be Evil

Here are things you need to know about them

#1

What we see of google on the out side is just the tip of the ice burg. For every idea that gets turned into product they make a 1000 that stay on the inside … this is the innovation methodology

#2

The google Microsoft story is the same as the Microsoft IBM story, to find out what happens to google next read a book.

#3

Google are forcing telcos to behave as a dumb pipe but the Telco’s are not going down without a fight, their response  is IMS.
Both outcomes are anti consumer !

#4

Google are kicking arse in the enterprise space
Google Search appliances are flying off the shelves to the big companies,
For the Small companies the rate of signup to google apps is astonishing
In the education sector they will soon be standard ! especially in higher education. Google K2 is free for this sector and in UK market schools are switching from RM so fast that RM cannot keep up with demand to turn off their services.
The hand that rocks the cradle …

From my  perspective …

Googles applications are great,
how they run their company is great
their attitude to embracing odd balls and weirdos is great.

I just cant help thinking that Its a pathetic that they choose to waste their dreams, talent and creativity on such a pathetic goal as taking down Microsoft

Google if you are listening, another way of saying Don’t be evil, is to say love everyone, and that includes the small state run telcos in little socialist european countries, the developers who want to make a living selling software and microsoft.

Sort it out … you can do so much better that.

Marketing your products in a down turn

Remember how I said that the profile of tenders was going to change because of the downturn?
The bell curve of opportunity value compared to frequency of deals will be squished, out in two directions.

Lets take a look a just a single company.

A large company has to speculate to accumulate. This is reflected in the internal purchasing mechanisms of the company. Roughly speaking there are sign off boundaries, the most influential people at each of these boundary levels are indicated in the above diagram. Even though a VP may have to sign off a purchase of 300k it will probably be a couple of directors at a lower level who make the real decision.

The down turn will reduce costs and therefore the whole curve will be smaller. However operations must still go on. You will see that the directors now control most of the spending rather than the VP’s. Because directors are still intouch with the delivery and are younger you have to change your marketing.

• make it more funky – remember your playing to the google generation
• make it about delivery
• dont dress your sales materials in the old school terminology – i.e. have a summary instead an exec summary

Thoughts on thought leadership

Thought leadership is good because …

1. The “thoughts” that are published are valuable to your company, as they will make you Faster, more efficient or introduce new products
2. The “thoughts” that are published are valuable to other companies, who will see benefits in deploying your thoughts, you will therefore have their respect.
3. The “thoughts” that are published are valuable to individuals as it increases their profile and therefore sense of self worth

Thought leadership is about

1. Having good thoughts
2. Having good publishing
3. Having an effective publishing feedback loop

If you want to get into thought leadership

1. You must create a distribution channel
2. You must create an editorial team that is empowered to publish
3. You must create a community of thought leaders

If  you want to beat your competitors

1. You must accept that this will not happen over night it will take at least a year
2. You must find a way to allow the editorial team to freedom to make technical changes to their site and to have skills and resource available (i.e. you must beat their media organisation)
3. You must encourage controversial views and livley debate under your brand (thought leaders ideas are not the same as every one else’s, so dont over govern them).

If you achieve this

1. You will notice the diference in sales and marketing, leads will come from diferent directions
2. You will have better staff retention
3. New opportunities will be presented to you far further down the sales process,

A good management strategy is … there go my people, I must follow them. Your organisation probably already has some great thought leaders, you can nurture their media and editorial talents and help them to better publicise their thoughts.

The media value chain explained

Modern technology, blogging, digital cameras and the 21st century have had a profound effect on the media industry. However the basic business of media has essentially remained unchanged.
One of the biggest changes we have seen in media is who the content creators are. Shakespeare once said “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players” and at no time is this more meaningful than now. Anyone who has a digital camera, microphone and access to the internet can easily and cheaply create content. This new force is competing with professional content creation facilities and organizations.
A conservative estimate on the number of blog posts and contributions to the Internet per day is 3 million per day, and is growing at an incredible rate. The traditional concept of content owner ship is changing. Content is increasingly becoming owned by individuals rather than companies or corporations.
Professional content producers are changing their habits too they are increasingly forced to collaborate with individual or informal organisations. However the tools and resources that they have access to are becoming very advanced and intelligent. Content aggregation companies are finding that the amount of content to select from is increasing exponentially however quality is dropping.
The distribution link in the media value chain has seen and is experiencing the most change. The technical architecture of the Internet has encouraged a separation of content production and aggregation from the provider of the distribution infrastructure.
New gadgets, better screens and the ubiquitous availability of the internet has seen an overall increase in media consumption. A notable consumption increase was the when the MP3 player allowed media companies to derive revenue from media consumption during travel time, which was previously a stage where print media was the only player.

The Content Creation link in the media value chain is where the content originates. The content creators are the musicians, artists, actors, web designers, games developers, coders, photographers, journalists, authors and critics.

As this group is so vast it is difficult to clearly identify the products and companies that they use however here is some of the key tools and services that are used by the more professional members.

Apple Mac
Apple have traditionally marketed their products at this group, hence the apple focus on highly visual user interface and easy to use design.

Adobe
The recent acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe consolidates their desktop media creation product suite.

Sony
The range of digital cameras has for a long time been the industry standard, however they are facing tough competition from new manufacturers who are providing high quality equipment at a lower cost.

Yamaha
This company provides a vast range of music focused content production equipment that range from beginner to expert.

There are also a number of new on line forum style services that provide tools and support for content creators. These are becoming increasingly more important.

Content ownership has not traditionally been in the hands of the content creator, and has normally been in the hands of a studio or commercial content organization. Modern technology has caused this step be come separated from both the content creator and the content publisher. The success of devices such as the “buffalo terra station” are testament to this

The content owner has a number of different needs, mainly licence and rights management and storage.

These have traditionally been handled by using a physical archive and product catalogue however there are new online products such as getty images and 3d02, that facilitate this.

It must be noted that the content owner and the content creator are increasingly the same person or company. This can be seen in the provision of products that facilitate both content creation and storage (sites such as eblogger).

The distribution and aggregation link in the value chain is the professional production of high quality content and the also the recycling, repackaging and re-branding of either user generated content or stock content.

This link is fulfilled by the studios, the web design and software companies, the TV production companies, games manufacturers, film companies and record labels.

Again on a world wide scale this is a vast group, with large notable organizations providing some exciting and high quality products. There are also millions of other smaller companies who perform the same role.

All of these organizations feed a whole ecosystem of different industries. Some examples of these are the professional production tool hire companies, event venues, filming locations and studios, moderators, event organisers, agencies, vehicle hire and recording studios.

Consumers will be most familiar with the brands that are within the distribution link in the value chain. These are brands such a UPC, Sky, the BBC or iTunes.

The providers of this link in the chain can roughly be divided into four groups

Internet Service Providers – These are the companies such as UPC, KPN and BT who sell bandwidth to consumers. Some of these organizations also have content delivery platforms.

Telecommunications companies – The traditional telephony provider is now behind a device that is capable of delivering high quality audio and normally also has a good screen. This has transformed this type of provider into a content delivery platform.

Broadcasters – These organizations acquire content, reassemble it into a linear stream and distribute it via radio frequency or satellite or cable. They sometimes make content and sometimes are also funded via the government. Some broadcasters provide devices that allow the consumer to view content and allow the broadcaster to derive revenue from the consumer.

Again this is a huge sector, that in turn feeds a whole ecosystem of providers, some of the companies that operate in this sector are so large that they can achieve a cost reduction by owning studios, networks, device manufacturers and infrastructure.

After deriving revenue directly from the consumer the players in this part of the value chain can also derive revenue from advertising sales. This gives rise to a whole raft of advertising companies, consumer behaviour monitoring and retailing companies.

Some of the type of companies that sell into this sector are
Satellite providers – Eutelsat, globcos
Call centre providers – Accenture, StarTek, NuComm
Network providers – UPC, Global crossing, BT, AT&T
Device manufacturers – Thompson, Pace, Apple, Nokia, Seimens, Samsung
Advertising platform providers – Google, Microsoft, Yahoo
Web technology and other high tech providers – Sun, Microsoft, Google
DRM and encryption providers – Microsoft, NDS, Nagra
Government

The media industry is all about you … the consumer. Every TV show, radio channel, book, magazine, computer game and web site has been market to you probably by a professional organization that derives revenue from you or from a provider within this delivery chain. It is also important to note that products you buy are also marketed to you via the same channels.

In addition to charges to the distribution companies that are a number of other companies who derive a revenue directly from the consumer. These are

Device manufacturers such as Nintendo, Apple, Nokia, Phillips, Sony. All of which provide an ever increasing range of products targeted at fulling your media consumption. Products that do this well and have effective DRM will normally hide the cost of the device in the media consumption however products that use open standards tend to be higher cost and place greater emphasis on style and usability.

Device accessories is also another lucrative source of revenue for many companies. As computing becomes ubiquitous and more and more mundane objects become intelligent you will see media consumption devices and fashion merging.

Payment brokerage is an important part of the consumer offering. Small content creators and content aggregators would prefer to derive revenue directly from the consumer without the cost of distribution. The payment brokerage (such as pay pal) offers the consumer protection, and offers the content producer a quick way to monetize their content.

Is it the end of Internet Anonymity?

I have just been asked to comment on this article on the end of online anonymity on the read write web.

My thoughts are this …

Is on line anonymity dead? The read write web think that the ground breaking case of the US state vs Lori Drew implies that the behaviour of Impersonating (Imping) is now illegal. I think this raises a bigger question,  does human kind have a right to anonymity? and if so, is the behaviour of the judiciary, the bureaucracy and commercial organizations in exploiting new technology to find out even more about us infringing on that right?

The secret ballet is an essential balance in the mechanism of democracy, and as such there is at least one piece of anonymity that a judiciary must protect. However society must be protected. Some might say that anonymity is a privilege rather than a right and that it is the individuals responsibility to guard their own anonymity. If the individual chooses to engage in a criminal activity such as grooming then they relinquish their rights.

My fear is that state will be slow in its response to technical innovation, there is no point shutting the stable door once the horse has bolted.

Can government cut costs with social networking? #2

The Gartner prediction is that government will use social networking for cost cutting.  I have written many articles now and none have caused so much controversy this topic.

This is where the controversy starts!

On the one hand the social network is the perfect way to identify some ones needs and NetMums is a great example of how sharing information can really improve young mothers lives.

On the other hand the social network relies on its members contributing and as such is an ideal way to farm data, and limit the distribution of information.

The UK has a long and chequered history of engineering social change, and engineering … errr … engineering. We are behind many of the “isums” and machines that have shaped the world and in the next few years we will see the marriage of technology and social policy.

I can not predict the outcome of this union, but it is a safe bet that the UK will first see the changes.

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Can government cut costs with social networking?

I have just read this http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39325058,00.htm?r=2

This point of view is fundamentally flawed and forgets that “government” is the action of authority, and that it imposes jurisdiction without unanimous, majority or even minority consensus. Where as the social network is the interaction of individuals with other individuals using technology.

The responsibility of government is to improve the lives of individuals via the application of abstraction i.e. legislation against cigarette advertising. Its judgements are guided by the research that it commissions, or secret information that it gathers.

Today the contents of the social network is massively influenced by the intelligentsia, who are the early adaptors of the technology, but tomorrow it will have mass market adoption.

Information and recommendations that can be derived from the contents of a social network will tomorrow reflect the reactionary majority view. It would be dangerous and irresponsible to allow research and policy to be solely guided by such networks.

The eminent thinkers of my great nation have a long and checked history of engineering large scale social change, and engineering large scale … errr … engineering.

We are behind many of the “isums” and machines that have shaped the world. Our age sees the direct conjunction of the two. I can not predict the outcome of this union, but it is a safe bet that the UK will first see the changes.