LSQHA Blog Reviews

The mobile phone's days as primarily a phone were short lived. Global mobile company Ericsson announced at the CTIA conference today that mobile data traffic surpassed voice traffic worldwide at approximately 140,000 Terabytes per month at the end of last year. GigaOM's Stacey Higginbotham writes , "Worryingly, that data traffic was generated by an estimated 400 million smartphones set against 4.6 billion mobile subscribers making voice calls. What happens when everyone has a smartphone?" This is an historic moment in terms of both technical capacity and the development of innovative features to serve mobile users. Sponsor The mobile industry is just coming to terms with this "tsunami of data" and the challenges it poses. Tricia Duryee wrote last year on MocoNews that two years ago none of the mobile companies would admit they faced a shortage of capacity, but that changed dramatically at the CTIA conference last year. In calling for more wireless spectrum, Qualcom co-founder Irwin Mark Jacobs said last year, "In the lab, we've done everything we know how to do to optimize spectrum. We have to use different tricks now." These tiny computers trying to use the spectrum that phones have traditionally used for voice are real game changers. As Duryee again reported last year, one smartphone equals 30 feature phones on a network, and one netbook or aircard equals 450 feature phones. It's not just about capacity, either. As mobile search specialist Peggy Anne Salz wrote last Summer, there's a whole lot of feature development possibilities opening up because of this data: "The advance of Internet-specific smartphones and the spread of app store schemes turns up the pressure on mobile operators (and their content providers) to decipher data transactions (on and off the network), combine it with location and demographic data and use the results to create a 360-degree view of the individual." Hopefully that will mean cool new features to serve users, not just mobile profiles to follow us around and target us with ads. So far smart phones have treated us pretty well though, haven't they? They certainly aren't just phones anymore. Don't miss the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 8th in Mountain View, California! We're at a key point in the history of mobile computing right now - we hope you'll join us, and a group of the most innovative leaders in the mobile industry, to discuss it. Discuss

More:
That's Not a Phone, It's a Tiny Computer: Global Mobile Data Surpasses Voice

The effort to bring Facebook into the enterprise continues with more services using Outlook as a gateway to extend a contact network and use as a foundations for a CRM environment. SenderOK is one of the latest effiorts to give more context to email by showing a picture of the sender in an email message. Too bad it only works on Windows XP or Vista. Ugh. Sponsor But let's take a look at the service as we are seeing more services that use email as a foundation for a social CRM environment. SenderOK compares itself to Microsoft's Outlook Soclal Connector and Xobni , an email plug-in that provides a search and profile element for Outlook. But we hear a lot of criticism that Xobni is a memory hog and slows down computers. As one reader said about Xobni in our last post concerning Outlook plug-ins : "Interesting article, although I have my doubts about Xobni which I used for several months but had to uninstall as it had gotten to the point where it was nearly impossible to use (too slow). Harmony sounds promising; sharing documents in place of merely sending them as attachments (hence overloading the network) is becoming critical if one wants to keep only one copy and not scatter several around." To be fair, Xobni is the leader in this space compared to other services. They have a loyal following. It makes sense that companies like SenderOK would go after this sector of the market. SenderOK features include a smart mapping capability to give a view of the person's unread email across multiple accounts. It will also prioritize the email. Our interest stems from the SenderOK "business card" feature. Email includes an image of the person and their profile information in the header of the message. In Outlook Social Connector, the image of the sender blocks out the message. In Xobni, the image and contact information appears in a widget. We expect these services to proliferate as more startups turn their attention to Outlook as a way to build a user base. Xobni has proven that this approach works. Further, Google Apps now integrates with third party applications. Services such as Zoho CRM and Intuit are leveraging GMail integration to offer hybrid applications. Perhaps 2010 will be the year email is viewed more as a foundation than a nuisance to be eliminated. Discuss

Read the rest here:
SenderOK: Email as a Facebook Connector and Social CRM Catalyst

The shortest way to describe this is that Google is no longer a verb. It's becoming a noun. Not just the few clicks to find information, but the information itself and the experience surrounding it. Today, we get to add Google's chapter to " Will One Company Dominate the Cloud " introspective series and take a glimpse of the silent revolution from "index" to "be" that is transforming the company and it's products to the default way to engage the Internet. As fate has it, Google done us a big favor in preparing for this piece. The company has launched an assault on the enterprise with its movement in the Google App Engine, having a stand-off with China , and negotiating with the EU . And that was just a bit of Google news from this week. Sponsor Whereas it's a bit more clear where Amazon and Cisco win (our recent analysis) as they head towards the cloud, with Google it takes a bit more expansive view. We have to take the focus out a bit, to be able to dial in on the details. Acknowledgment: Developers are the Products they Build We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Tim Bray . He has been a key contributor and thought leader in key areas of interoperability and information design, including his leadership in bringing XML to the world. He recently announced that he's joining Google and focusing on Android in a transition from Sun. Several things struck us about our dialog that we think are key for Google. First, when Bray described his new job at Google, he talked about what he wanted to do and what he saw that needed to be done. Within three days of being there, he has a sense of ownership of the companies products and mission. In some organizations, you may never get such a luxury. Second, Bray described his opportunity to "roll up his sleeves" and get back in the groove as a developer on a project he feels passion for. He mentioned his desire to take the open APIs of Android and expose some of the information in a more portable way, for example to transfer a call log from one phone to another. A very interesting project, with tangible results. This type of innovation lives on top of all the work the company has done to make the API exist, and to attract individuals who are willing to rethink how it should really work. We think that this is the most interesting thing about where Google is right now. It's "open" mantra gives the company the ability to see a whole generation into the future of information channel disruption. And, by bringing in "no holds barred" developers like Bray and a legion of others, the company is patiently solving problems that many of us don't even know exist. Lastly, Bray said something that caused us some deep thought. His comment, "when the Drizzle team was moved into Google, they just kept working on the their open source project and things stayed nearly the same." What caused us to pause was that open source development, whether Linux or XML, gives the developer, as a person, a way to contribute to the world. And it's documented. If the Internet was the Bible, leading a key open source initiative, is like getting your own chapter in the book, where time will be the judge of your actions. Much better than your manager alone. To know that hard work, intellectual capital, libraries are available to the world after the contract is complete. This really speaks to the artist in us, in a way, the paid open source developer is using Google as a canvas. If working at Google offers this emotional spark to employees, it will gain entirely new efficiencies in solving the big problems, in the context of individual efforts. Maybe this open source spirit is embedded into Twitter, and is why it works. We like to contribute to our version of the greater good...and want fans to cheer us on. What we learned; acknowledgment matters, and connections to the whole population of people is an amazing vehicle. Google: become an indie rock star - with the strength of grep. All of the Information on Earth Google's destiny to become the hub of the worlds information is intertwined with history. And this comes with artifacts of policy and posturing. To start with, not everyone agrees that Google should achieve a dominant cloud position. As we're noticing, stopping it is another matter. We'd like to suggest that in 2010, the company is not shy about stepping towards its future and will use its power, technology, and cash to stir it up. Here is our list of organizations in the world that Google has, is, or will be, continually bumping into in its quest for cloud information dominance. China (counties own the filters for the people) ATT (service providers own consumer on the network) Penguin (book publishers own the words in the texts) Visa (financial institutions own the digits in the transactions) Facebook (social networks know the details) Amazon (commerce sites own the decision point) Twitter (owns "what's happening") Microsoft (owns the computer applications and files) Open can be a Key to Unlock Doors We see both practical and strategic reasons that Google has a deep connection with the open source movement. Strategically, being the new optimized layer, removing all historic barriers to information give the company more leverage. Practically, solutions can be built where information is free. Reviewing a few examples, such as Google Earth, Android, and even GMail and we see that where there are open protocols and information disruptive products can be built. Once they are built, the Google wields a significant economic advantage in binding the worlds information assets and converting them to eyeballs. Here, we take a quick look at the information assets that Google is investing the global cloud. Results : Google has moved away from Page Rank to "Closest Object" in it's default results. What this means is that many businesses today show up as widget in the results in google with embedded links, maps, and other efficiencies. Ads : This is perhaps the best known and most valuable insight and unique asset, who wants to pay for what customer Realtime index : Google has worked to keep up with Twitter's realtime firehose Semantic index : The company continues to add more and more microsyntax parsers into its index, giving more controlled tools for publishers GMail : It had to be done. And it is monetized. Documents and files : Google Docs and the Apps Marketplace create a whole new stream of information about an individual. Private, personal, and shared. Mobile transactions : This is an interesting sample of where Google's strategy to build the Android OS pays off in the cloud. Not only does Google get to connect mobile to the rest of the offerings, but also to be able to dial in on movements, calls, and other critical tasks in our real-time lives. Books : Indexing all of them, first is an interesting piece of the strategy to break apart historic containers of knowledge. Is the book copyrighted? How about the quote? Browsers : The browser knows a lot. Google's Chrome moves it from being default search, to being default experience. This was a great example of where access to information "Faster pages" is the simple value proposition for consumers to switch. Filters : Protecting companies, trademarks, and interpreting the legality of free speech. Someone has to do it, if we're all one people. Health transactions : Google has even taken on one of the most sensitive challenges, private health information. And, it's connections to legacy systems that prefer EDI to JSON. It's clear that Google is making progress. What we've also learned in this review is that the companies biggest asset - people - may scale to solve problems in lightweight ways that entire teams and companies haven't been able to in the past. Perhaps being open, or transparent, gives the company a unique advantage in being prepared for a cloud future. Is the cloud where the action is? What verb would you be if you were hired at Google? Discuss

Read the original post:
Rulers of the Cloud: Google Becomes the Cloud, Search is a Feature

McKesson is a global health care leader that has 26 operating companies. The centrial IT group had the vision to automate "the last mile" of IT planning, the budget approval process. We think of it as the budget approval dance, and when containing costs, it's a ritual that can leave scars. This company has evolved to the point of improving the cost of budgeting, and making it faster and smarter by understanding the assets, services, and service delivery of IT. Budgeting can be painful because it can be in slow-motion. Contrast this with the real-time controls of such as VMware V-Motion and Amazon's web service console and we see a great linkup for driving process change through budgeting. And driving budgeting by cloud and virtualization. We took a look at McKesson's journey and the service catalog functions of NewScale , an IT services catalog company. Sponsor McKesson: Let's Start with Less Meetings and Less 5mb Spreadsheets NewScale has customers like McKesson and Charles Schwab and competitors like HP, IBM, Tivoli. The company has been growing its customer base and helping stable-state enterprises to leverage Service Management. And that leads directly into cloud procurement. We tracked the use case at McKesson, where the company landed at the service desk in the cloud as a means to the end in their journey to build a low-impact budget process . We see a lot of benefit in this approach, where if successful, it would mean that the advantages to go with commodity pre-approved services dramatically improves the timing and effort of procurement. This is a lever that gives Finance a significant hand in the IT spend. Since cloud and virtualization offerings can be spun-up with service call, the cloud is well positioned to be there as budgeting and approval processes are automated. In phase one, the company reported significant progress in moving processes towards the service catalog. One click vs. Fill Out the Form In the end, the move towards enterprise standards may be won over simplicity. Is it less clicks to provision. This means connecting the dots between processes, systems, software, teams, and policy. To EC2, or to EC2 through Official Channels: That is the Question IT services management comes into the picture and could make a difference in how the business and technical contributors of organizations are rewarded for moving to a standard platform. Information Technology Infrastructure Library is tool set that has been given to IT managers to try to wrap standard language around IT service management. It gives the enterprise a common way to manage processes for IT and track the changes involved in building and operating systems. Services platforms like Amazon and Salesforce can be considered IT disinter-mediation. We all know a IT leader out there somewhere who is funding their project by credit card out in the cloud. IT, of course, knows this also (especially since they are likely watching your network traffic). One part of the service management offering is making it even easier than Amazon. Carrot, vs. stick. Service catalog management has the promise when it wraps things like Amazon's EC2, or VMwares offerings, gives the enterprise a way to get the same service from the web. And, with budget approval and IT approval baked in, the carrot is there. All of IT moves towards transparency and IT processes as being measured as processes. In the ITIL community, there is discussion of the next layer of the library moving towards service delivery in the move towards ITIL Version 3. It's easy to see that "provision server" becomes fully automated. Soon, all the IT functions below it become invisible. We see this as a future cloud inflection point, where instead of there "cloud services", we are all in one. Zen Mashup What has been your experience in mashing ITIL, ITIL Service Delivery in your environment? Do your IT services flow like water? Discuss

Follow this link:
Got Budget? Virtualization as Poster Child for Less Meetings

Based on a patent filing that was published by the USPTO today and first discovered by Patently Apple, Apple could soon enter the location-based social networking market. The patent , which was filed in September 2008, describes a scenario where a group of users with mobile devices like the iPhone come together at an event like a concert, wedding, political rally or trade show. Normally, you would have to collect personal information from all the attendees you meet and then transfer this data manually into your existing social network if you want to stay in touch with them. Apple's patent, however, describes a system where all of the devices in a specific location can automatically become part of a new social network based on their location. The patent filing refers to this service as iGroups. Sponsor This could, for example, allow event organizers to provide attendees with additional content and services during the event and after it is over. The exchange of this information would be brokered by trusted devices at the event and information about the social network can be stored in the cloud and exchanged with other services. Turning Ad Hoc Networks into Permanent Social Networks As Apple notes in the patent ("Group Formation Using Anonymous Broadcast Information "), technologies like Bluetooth personal area networks allow modern cell phones to easily create ad hoc networks, but it is virtually impossible to recreate this network at a later time for users to continue their discussions or exchange additional content. In a very detailed example, Apple's patent describes how iGroups could automatically detect that a group of users is in or around a specific location (in the example, this event is Apple WWDC 2008). The iGroups service could then invite all the attendees to join this group and create a permanent social network for everybody who was in attendance and opts in to the group. Will Apple Actually Do Anything With This Patent? This, of course, isn't Apple's first patent for a location-based service. As with all of Apple's patents, it remains to be seen if the company will actually release any product based on this filing. Given Apple's position in the mobile market, however, it wouldn't come as a surprise if the company decided to turn some of these patents into actual product. Discuss

View original post here:
iGroups: Apple Files Patent for Location-Based Social Networking App