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November 17, 2003
Michael Gartenberg on Digital Ubiquity
Windows 95 as a watershed event. Before that we worried about people taking enterprise software home and messing up licensing agreements. Now we worry about people bringing in their software from home and messing up out licensing agreements. People now frequently have better computers at home than they have at work. (What they don't have is better connectivity in general.)
IT departments are strapped installing security patches. Meanwhile users are out exploring the future of IT.
- Information co-mingling requires optimized synchronization. The IT universe is not prepared for this data co-mingling.
- Users cope multiple access venues. Home and office: home base. Libraries, hotels, and airports: steady relationships, kiosks, malls, etc.: fleeting connections. IT department need to consider providing mobile data services to users to help employees maintain connectivity focus.
- Wireless data service charges (which are hard to keep track of) are a huge hurdle to the growth of digital ubiquity. This is true for me. AT&T charges me an arm and a leg for a limited connection and I rarely use it since I'm afraid of going over.
- The trend to wireless networks in homes will put increasing pressure on IT departments to provide similar services at work. 2004 is the tipping point for wireless home networks. This causes networking to expand rapidly since wireless makes network deployment trivial for the home user.
- PC throughout the home are changing the nature of the PC and how we work. I think this raises the question of what new products will consumers want as this trend continues. Multiple devices will create a need for bridges to ensure interoperability. Linking this all up is hard and the majority of users won't get it. Michael says that there's one person in his neighborhood who makes his living setting up universal remote controls for people.
03:19 PM | Recommend This | Print This
NY Times on Utopia
Today's NY Times contains an article on Utopia, Utah's extensive, government-backed broadband project. Here's some interesting quotes from the article:
But private sector competitors and taxpayer groups assert that the cities and their residents face a high level of financial risk for a network that may far exceed their needs. Telephone and cable companies nationwide are scrambling to build networks relying on less expensive, less advanced technology that they argue will be perfectly adequate for many years to come.
Jerry Fenn, the president of the Utah division of Qwest, the regional telephone company here that provides its own high-speed Internet access, said there were few uses yet for the network Utopia plans to deliver. The speeds to be provided "are way more than what most consumers need in their home," Mr. Fenn said, adding, "Why provide a Rolls-Royce when a Chevrolet will do?"
From In Utah, Public Works Project in Digital
Referenced Mon Nov 17 2003 13:56:42 GMT-0700
My experience is that you have to take what Jerry says with a grain of salt. He knows his job: he's an advocate. Before he was regional President at Qwest, he was the lawyer for the Rural Telecom Assoc. In that capacity he was frequently at odds with Qwest. Right now, his job is to make sure Qwest's interests in Utah are protected and that doesn't include Utopia.
"This is a very powerful test case," said Sharon Gillett, a research associate at M.I.T.'s center for technology, policy and industrial development. "If Utopia succeeds, it will be the first really large-scale deployment of fiber to the home in the United States."
From In Utah, Public Works Project in Digital
Referenced Mon Nov 17 2003 13:56:42 GMT-0700
Of course, the biggest question about success is "can they get funding?" That's always been the question.
Mr. Morris said Utopia was arranging financing from a New York investment bank. He said that the cities would be asked to guarantee a portion of the loan Utopia acquires from the investment bank, but that the amount was still being negotiated. Such a guarantee, while not providing a subsidy in the form of tax-exempt financing, substantially increases the creditworthiness of Utopia, dropping the interest rate to the 6 percent range from as high as 12 percent, Mr. Morris said. But it also puts those cities at risk should the project fail to meet expectations.
Mr. Morris said he expected to secure the financial commitment this month, paving the way for construction to begin next spring or summer.
From In Utah, Public Works Project in Digital
Referenced Mon Nov 17 2003 13:56:42 GMT-0700
Such a guarantee is not a foregone conclusion. They haven't gone back to the 17 cities that comprise Utopia and gotten agreement to do the guarantee. I suspect some of them will drop out if that is part of the deal. There will also be some significant opposition at that stage from Qwest, AT&T, and the Utah Taxpayer's Assoc. Don't be surprised to see the Utah Legislature step into this mess. In fact, if I know Jerry Fenn, he's already got several legislator's lined up to introduce the bills and the boxcars (emplty placeholder bills) are probably already in place. Should be an interesting few months.
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Morning Keynote: Gail Whipple on Digital Media
The morning's keynote is Gail Whipple, VP of Digital Media for IBM Global Services speaking on Digital Media: Cool to Core. Digital media is unstructured content not stored in traditional databases. Gail see three key trends:
- Rapid increase in content moving from analog to digital as are devices
- Increased broadband penetration
- Lowering of price points, especially in storage (1 minute of digital video is 375MB).
By 2005 global digital media spend is $33 billion without including the devices for input and output.
On demand is the logical extension of today's business processes growing more mature over time. Demands a shift in how companies think about allocation resources. Four critical components to on demand environment
- Integrated - Devices, people, etc.
- Virtualized - grid computing providing utility computing
- Open - open standards, open source,
- Autonomic - self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing, self-protecting
Some examples from IBM Global Services clients:
The National Geographic Society has over 10,000 available images with 3000 images added each year. NGS now has a searchable catalog with 24/7 availability including online licensing and payment. NGS photo sales revenue tripled with reduced handling costs. Grew revenue without a staff increase
Coca-Cola built a system for the preservation and retrieval of 100 years of value brand assets. They built a comprehensive library available to 30,000 images which is used in marketing and orientation. The project saves money by retrieving existing images rather than recreating them.
Digital media application on homedepot.com for customers to view kitchen layouts. Number one destination for homedepot.com customers and customers spend 22 minutes at the site. Customers can reconfigure, visualize, and when finished order the supplies online or bring the print-out into their local store for purchase.
MacDonalds implementing a dynamic digital merchandising system allowing individual stores manage their own messaging via digital kiosks, flat panel displays, and so on. Sales in stores that implement it are up 33%. Increase in sales can be directly tied to featured products on panels.
IBM has been awarded 22,000 patents over the last 10 years and this portfolio has resulted in $10B additional revenue to IBM's bottom line. This experience drives IBM's approach to digital rights management. I'm not sure I caught the entire point of this, but it was clear that she was trying to point to some middle ground that respects IP without restricting it. She offered no information about how this might actually be done.
01:30 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Who Set's Web Site Strategy?
One of the tracks is individual Jupiter Research analysts discussing issues they've been tracking. I'm attending on on optimizing staffing, spending and technology selection in the Web enterprise. I'm not sure what a "Web enterprise" is. I gather its an organization that depends on a Web presence to do their business. The analyst is David Schatsky.
An important first question: Who manages your organization's web site? Your IT department (most companies) or your marketing department? The issue is one of overall Web site governance as well as who's making the final decisions. The problem is that there are often competing interests and optimizing one business line at the expense of another or just leaving them to fight it out may suboptimize the overall enterprise strategy.
One of the key topics is Web site metrics and analytics. Metrics must balance customer and business view. Examples of business metrics include conversion rate, average order size, etc. Examples of customer metrics include satisfaction rate, traffics, etc. Clearly the former is more closely aligned with what most organizations want from the Web site, but you can't get there without the latter. The question is do you track them both and manage them both?
When asked "Why do you conduct usability testing?" 43% of respondents said to "ensure best possible experience" and 24% said "make sure we're considering customer needs," while only 16% said "drive metrics like conversion rate."
Furthermore, most companies are not just making the wrong decisions, they're making it from the wrong data. 59% of respondents make usability decisions from surveys and 44% from interviews, but only 14% made these decisions from revenue metrics and 12% didn't collect any usability data at all.
The truth is, its easier to gather technical metrics over business metrics such as page views, hits, and other visitor technographics and harder to figure customer profiles, registration conversion, realization of marketing goals, etc. Fewer than 25% of companies use click-stream data, recency of purchase, open-rates and click-thrus for email, or other data to drive Web site decisions. 63% of companies do not have a full time employee whose job is to analyze Web site behavior.
So, what to do? First, David recommends that you put a firm governance structure in place. Decide who's in charge of these steps:
- Define business goals
- Establish success metrics
- Identity levers, behavioral inputs
- Prioritize investments
- Manage, exploit usability
Second, hire an analyst whose job is to turn technographic data in to actionable reports for sales, marketing, and production.
David wraps up with these conclusions:
- Web operations spending is healthy and rational
- Complex governance structures can undermine Web effectiveness
- Identify and track metrics relevant to business success
- Tune organizational structures to unlock technology value
01:25 PM | Recommend This | Print This
CDXPO: Enterprise IT Week
I'm at Jupiter Media's Enterprise IT Week this week in Las Vegas. I didn't fly my plane since it was snowing in Salt Lake. Delta got me there nicely without the weather headaches. CDXPO is Alan Meckler's answer to COMDEX and we'll see how it goes. I suspect it will be slow the first year, even so the program looks pretty good.