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Scanning the news the other day and what do we see but a reminder of the many acronyms in the cloud computing world. Again, it's a vendor with a made up name. This time it's Verizon with an update to its "Computing as a Service" or CaaS for short. Acronyms abound in the cloud computing world - perhaps more than any other technology in play today. They are emerging at a rapid clip. It's understandable as cloud computing is so new and there are so many ways for it to be applied. But it's also frustrating. Sponsor Verizon's service looks solid. But the name creates more confusion. Get this: Verizon also offers "Everything as a Service." That takes the cake, or should we say... muffin! It makes the whole concept of cloud computing a bit confusing as you try to understand what really is available. It becomes an issue of "what is it now?" This week's other imaginative term - Virtualization as a Service - from Salesforce.com and VmWare. It's the center issue for our Weekly Poll: What does Virtualization as a Service Really Mean? Dave Geada, vice president of marketing at StrataScale, had this to say about what it means: I think [new names are] a lot of unwarranted marketing hype (and that means something coming from a marketer). Knowing very little about the announcement, I would guess that the two are partnering in order to provide a platform where Force.com partners can deploy integrated solutions to a VMware enabled Salesforce cloud. In essence these providers would have a one-stop-shop for delivering their solutions to market instead of having to rely on an assortment of hosting partners to deploy their solutions. A joint platform initiative like the one I just described would also benefit enterprises who could host their own customized VM appliances on this cloud and easily integrate them with their Salesforce implementations and Force.com applications. In doing so VMware would be able to access a segment of the market where it's been having some difficulties (i.e. SMB ISVs) and Salesforce would benefit from providing a more comprehensive solution to their partner ecosystem. If I'm right about this (and I reserve the right to be wrong), isn't that a much more compelling story than the mumbo-jumbo we're dealing with now? Cloud providers should demonstrate some more restraint in throwing the "cloud" label around and turn the conversation back around to the value that their providing to customers and partners. And high profile providers like Salesforce and VMware should be setting the example. We expect these ancronyms will filter out over time. Or perhaps VaaS and CaaS will stand the test of time. It's just too early to tell. Until then, how about a muffin? Discuss

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Another Cloud Computing Acronym To Drive You Bonkers

As part of my ongoing Online Strategy Roundtables , I met yesterday with four new entrepreneurs, all at the early stage of validating who their customers are and building their businesses. Entrepreneurs who are just starting out need to ask themselves some hard questions in order to develop a crisp go to market strategy. I pulled together a list of such questions that you can find here and in my Positioning book to help you "Clarify Your Story". Up first was Martin Calle and his company OraQuel . Martin worked for years on product development for companies like Procter & Gamble and FritoLay, but eventually wanted to create a product that would be his own. Sponsor i> Guest author Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She has founded three companies and writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy . She has a masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her three books, Entrepreneur Journeys , Bootstrapping, Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction , and Positioning: How To Test, Validate, and Bring Your Idea To Market are all available from Amazon. Her new book Vision India 2020 was recently released. Mitra is also a columnist for Forbes and runs the 1M/1M initiative. /p> After researching what type a product would be best to get behind, Martin came across research showing a strong correlation between gum disease and heart disease, and came up with a heart-smart oral care product. Since large retailer stores won't work with a "little guy" in this category, he has started to approach social media groups like mommy bloggers and TwitterMoms to try to build up a grassroots following. I believe Martin's product does answer a real need, but he has positioned this as a product just for kids. I think he will get better pickup if he positions this as a product for the entire family - a much larger segment of the market. Martin will need to do some controlled experiments to validate whether or not my hunch is correct, and then move forward with his social media PR campaign. Nick Quay presented for BluNami , a mobile marketing company that has developed a technology to help clients connect to Bluetooth users in a certain proximity. Nick and his team have been working with a wide variety of clients looking to use their technology a many different ways, from a city using it to make emergency announcements to restaurants offering deals to lure in customers. (As soon as I hear anyone is trying to work with a government entity, especially a startup venture, I immediately want them to stop wasting their time there. Unless they are paying you upfront as some type of consulting situation, most startups need their cash flow and can not sustain the government's slow 12-24 month sales cycles.) Like many entrepreneurs with a versatile technology, Nick is trying to do too many things right now - the old "spray and pray." While there may be many different segments interested in the product, each requires a unique go-to-market strategy. The best way to scale this business is to figure out what is the best value proposition and the easiest segment to sell to, and then focus time and energy on that while continuing to bootstrap your way to profitability. Later there may be time and money for exploring other avenues. Frederic Guitton gave a nice presentation for ActivSalesAgent , a business that combines its software with call centers as a way to help convert visitors on client websites into better qualified sales leads. This business is further down the road of validation than the others, and is profitable. As I questioned him about price point, Frederic was ready with metrics to show that what they are doing is indeed working. We discussed how using solid statistical information along with references from early customers is the best was to convert potential customers into clients - and those reference accounts do not need to be the biggest clients. Small business references work just as well. That's how Salesforce.com did it. I think this business has legs, but urged Frederic to be open to doing some type of offshore chat centers down the road because I think reducing costs will become a bigger issue as this business continues to scale. Then Linda Muncy, who is just starting out, presented her business idea. She is hired to provide photo-related entertainment at events. Guests are creatively photographed and given the image in some form as a giveaway. She has started reproducing the images onsite on a material similar to Skinit so guests can attach the image to their handhelds, laptops, etc. She would like to develop a product kit so other event planners can do this as well. Linda has yet to truly validate her product and service. I always tell entrepreneurs to validate your idea before building any product. I think Linda will be amazed by what she learns after calling 100 event planners to get their feedback. This may only be a small business, but that is perfectly okay - as long as it is profitable. These roundtables are the cornerstone programming of a global initiative that I have started called One Million by One Million ( 1M/1M ). Its mission is to help a million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond, build $1 trillion in sustainable global GDP, and create 10 million jobs. In 1M/1M, I teach the EJ Methodology which is based on my Entrepreneur Journeys research, and emphasize bootstrapping, idea validation, and crisp positioning as some of the core principles of building strong fundamentals in early stage ventures. If you are an entrepreneur working on an idea or an early stage business, I am also very interested in hearing what you are looking for from 1M/1M. Please weigh in here . We are crowdsourcing the design of 1M/1M, and requests that have come up include Receivables Financing as a way to bridge to a validated business without giving up precious equity, I would love to hear your thoughts. i> You can find the recording of this roundtable session here . Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here . You can register for the next roundtable here . /p> em> Photo by Svilen Milev . /p> Discuss

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Startup Strategy Roundtable: Early Stage Business Building

About a year ago, Google launched real-time search suggestions that were tailored towards users in different countries. Today, Google is taking this one step further and is l aunching an improved version of Google Suggest that also takes larger metro areas into account. Now, Google Suggest will offer different suggestions for users in New York City and Portland, OR, for example. For the time being, this feature is only available in the U.S. Sponsor Smarter Spelling Correction for Names In addition, Google is also rolling out smarter corrected spellings for names. As Google notes, people often search for names, but don't know the exact spelling. Now, whenever you add a person's profession, affiliation or other related keywords to an approximation of this person's name, Google will offer better suggestions and more useful spelling corrections. This feature, too, is currently only available in the U.S., though Google plans to roll it out in other parts of the world within the next few months. Auto-Correction for 31 Additional Languages Google is also rolling out auto-corrected spellings for 31 additional languages. These auto-corrections kick in whenever a user misspells a common word. For uncommon misspellings, Google will still give you a link to the corrected search results behind a link that says " Did you mean: ReadWriteWeb ." Whenever Google feels confidents that the auto-corrected version is what you were really looking for, the search engine bypasses the link and just drops you off on a search results page that is based on the correct spelling. Discuss

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Google Introduces Localized Google Suggest and Smarter Auto-Corrections

A Redmond-based startup is introducing a location-based social sharing service called Glympse . With a mobile application that works on iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile devices, users share their location (aka a "Glympse"), allowing their friends to see that location on another phone or on any other Internet-connected device. Senders can customize who gets to see the Glympse they post, whether the recipient is just one person, a group, or even everyone they've added as a friend on a social network like Facebook or Twitter. The interesting twist to this service isn't the location-sharing aspect, of course - there are dozens of companies that allow for that today - it's the service's real-time nature and the thoughtfully included privacy features. Using a patent-pending timer option, Glympse users specify how long their location is visible to which select group of friends, with a maximum time of four hours before the location data expires. Sponsor Location is Not a Game, It's a Utility Unlike the current crop of location-based social networking services (think Brightkite, Loopt, Gowalla, Foursquare, etc.), Glympse isn't designed to find nearby friends, share tips about local businesses or collect rewards for check-ins. It employs no game mechanics to encourage participation - that is, you aren't given badges or points the more you use it. You don't get to become the "mayor" of a place by checking in there the most, like you do in Foursquare. In fact, Glympse can hardly be called a "mobile social network" at all. Glympse is more like a utility, and that may what ensures its success long after everyone tires of "checking in" just because they can. There are a number of scenarios where Glympse may prove useful. Their PR team says they've seen its earliest users sharing locations related to cross-country road trips, marathons, paragliding flights and afternoons of skiing. Although those standout occasions may give Glympse a "wow" factor, it's in answering the everyday "where are you?" type questions where Glympse could prove be the most useful. In the "What is Glympse?" introductory video , the company says sending a Glympse is easier than making a call or sending a text. That's not necessarily true, though. Calls and texts are sent with the push of a button where Glympse requires a multi-step process that begins with installing the application on your mobile device, if supported . But as mentioned later in the video, many states have banned texting or making phone calls while driving. That's where Glympse comes in. Before you leave work, school or your home, you could send out a Glympse. For the time you specify, those permitted to see your location can track where you are at any given moment in real-time courtesy of your phone's GPS capabilities. Live Updating Maps and Privacy Features That's right - Glympse doesn't "check you in," it tracks you. Much like those pricey "family locator" cell phone add-on plans do, but for free. The service also addresses the privacy issues surrounding location-sharing, even going so far as to work with a safety group called ConnectSafely.org when designing the service. In Glympse, adding friends isn't an "all or nothing" endeavor. That is, you don't choose whether to just accept or reject friends. You accept friends, then group them accordingly ("family," "friends," "work," etc.). Later, when you're ready to share your location, you choose which group or groups should see it. Only want the spouse and kids to tune in? Share a Glympse with family. At a large conference where you want to meet up with colleagues? Send a Glympse to your "work" group. And so on. Facebook Integration: A Plus, Not the Selling the Point Much of the news coverage related to Glympse's launch has to do with its Facebook integration. That's an interesting option to be sure, especially since Facebook plans to announce their own location-sharing service later this month, according to reports. But whether or not Facebook users actually care to see the locations of their friends is another matter entirely. Many Facebook users simply use the network to catch up with friends and family they don't get to see every day by posting on their wall, chatting via Facebook's IM service and by browsing their shared photos, videos and links. Whether or not a friend is on their way to a meeting right now may be completely irrelevant information to these users. Like the intrusions from other apps and games, Glympse's Facebook updates - which come via a large, embedded map placed in the News Feed - could very well end up being hidden from view by Facebook users who simply aren't interested in seeing that sort of data. In other words, it's arguable that Glympse's Facebook (and Twitter) sharing features aren't necessarily the key selling points of its service. Real-time live data, the utility aspect of the tool itself and its built-in privacy features, however, are. Hopefully, mainstream users will understand that before mistakenly dismissing it as just another Facebook app clogging up their News Feed with noise. Discuss

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Glympse: Real-Time, Private Location-Tracking May be the Winning Formula

Email may be old fashioned, but it's still where we spend a lot of our time online. Today Google announced that its webmail service Gmail is becoming all the richer with the inclusion of support for sending Google Calendar invitations inside the email composition window. In addition to being able to insert invitations, you can also cross reference your calendar availability with the availability of anyone included in your email thread that you have given permission to see the Google Calendar. It's not a perfect system, but it's pretty neat and it demonstrates the potential for building cool new features on top of our email inboxes. Sponsor Mashups and platforms are all about cross referencing multiple sources of data or functionality, as in this case: email plus calendar. We wrote earlier this spring about a startup called Rapportive that cross references email and social media data about an email's sender (see also competitor Etacts ), and earlier this month we discussed the incredible potential in Google's announcement of a way to give developers secure access to the contents of your emails for analysis and the creation of innovative services. Yahoo has been calling this kind of approach Inbox 2.0 and has been working on it for more than two years. Here's what we wrote in our November 2007 coverage of Yahoo's vision - how do you think it's worked out? ( Yahoo Says the Future Will Be Modeled on Facebook ) The social network of the future will be populated by the RSS feeds of the activities of your friends and your friends will be determined by email. The big players won't put a major push into building a new social network. "It is much easier to extend an existing habit than to create a brand," are the words Google's Joe Krause. Your email account isn't valuable because it's got the email adresses of other people who could be solicited commercially - it's valuable because it articulates who in the world is able to command your attention. It contains analyzable, direct communication between you and the people most important to you. [Yahoo's] Garlinghouse says that in the future email and IM will be prioritized depending on the importance to you of the people who send it to you. We're not talking about the number of times people email you - we're talking about the percentage of times you open those emails, the keywords used in them relative to your personal/work profile, there are metrics so crazy we can hardly imagine that are available for determining the importance of people in your life. In your email. Facebook's people-search uses some similar math already. Various Ways Email Gets Innovated On Clearly there are all kinds of different levels of sophistication that can come with these sorts of developments. In fact, two plus years after Yahoo's call to action, things still seem relatively elementary. Rapportive displays data uniquely well but Etacts displays more data. This new Google Calendar integration with Gmail offers some visibility into your and your contacts' availability, but it doesn't tell you what you've got scheduled at a given time. Etacts offers inferior invitation sending but has a whole set of reminder and follow up features that Gmail doesn't offer natively. And Yahoo Mail more closely ties into Facebook than any other email, something millions of people are sure to enjoy. So while all the kids rant and rave about Twitter, Facebook, augmented reality, iPads and location based social networking, don't let them deny: email can still be very exciting. Discuss

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Your Inbox as Platform: Google Calendar More Closely Integrated With Gmail