A Nybble is Half a Byte

Small-to-Mid-Sized Businesses Need a Technology Strategy for 2012

2011-12-01T12:56:00.000-07:00

Changes in technology are forcing small-to-mid-sized businesses (SMB’s) to face a new set of challenges and opportunities to position themselves for success. The rise of consumer applications and devices in corporate settings (consumerization), social media and the increasing viability of creating a virtual work (telework / at home work) environment have changed the business playing field. One of the challenges this creates is that a balance must be struck between somewhat opposing strategic mindsets: reducing costs and increasing efficiencies while reshaping business models and investing in mobility and business and customer intelligence. Though cost reduction is important, strategic spending and placing more emphasis on growth, innovation, and customer value is where the opportunity lies.

Technology Strategy

To embrace this opportunity, the mindset of SMB leaders must shift from viewing technology as a back office function and enabler of cost reduction to that of a driver of growth and value. As SMB’s look to gain better insights, improve collaboration, reach new customers and improve workforce mobility, a technology strategy must be developed and organizations should look to invest in solutions that can deliver those capabilities. Managing costs, improving efficiencies, mitigating risks, driving up productivity and focusing on superior customer service are critical business priorities as well. Based on these priorities, a solid technology strategy formation will include aligning the technology and business strategies and mapping new technology initiatives to the attainment of goals and objectives within the overall business strategy for 2012.

Along with technology strategy formation and overall business strategy alignment, the new technology initiatives should also be balanced between solutions that drive short term cost savings and those that enable revenue growth and stronger customer relationships in the mid-to-long term. Examples may include but not be limited to:

Leveraging a business analytics and information management platform allowing a business to better collect, aggregate, and transform data into insightful and actionable intelligence
Forming and implementing a virtual work program to increase the labor pool from which you hire, upping your caliber of talent and potentially leading to increased revenue and stronger customer relationships – not to mention there is no requirement for additional space to accommodate the new talent, reducing associated bricks and mortar costs
Implementing a collaboration platform to drive innovation, improve employee productivity, and enable a stronger customer focus
Leveraging a business performance management platform to monitor financial and operational performance versus key objectives and benchmarks
Leveraging public/private/hybrid cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) to take advantage of a shared infrastructure to reduce costs
Creating a social media strategy and leveraging a social media aggregation platform, such as Sprout Social, among others, which will enable you to better understand which social platforms your customers are using, what content they want to see and how often they want to see it, gaining insight and giving your business greater exposure

Until a technology strategy is formed and aligned with your overall business strategy, however, it is important to keep existing core IT platforms current and secure and continue to invest as needed in your existing systems, storage, software, and other infrastructure until the newly formed technology strategy can be executed. SMB’s that can manage this dual focus and who understand the deeper potential of technology as an enabler of change will be the one’s that gain the biggest competitive advantage.

Ultimately, the formation of a solid technology strategy for 2012 is crucial and when aligned properly with the overall business strategy, it can deliver immediate and very powerful results, providing you with a distinct advantage over your competitors.

What’s your technology strategy for 2012?

What else would you add to the list of examples?

Jonathan T. Senger (JTS) is a seasoned technology strategist, leadership and consulting professional who has developed effective business and technology strategies for various organizations

full bio | contact

The Case for Social CRM (SCRM)

2011-04-07T13:41:00.000-06:00

With the onset of Web 2.0, there are fundamental changes taking place as top down communication within an organization is breaking down and the trust factor from company to consumer is eroding. Consider what is happening right now: Your customers are acting whether you participate or not. Consumers are actively talking about your company, forcing transparency. You have a reputation online whether you like it or not and consumers will trust that reputation more than anything else.

These changes can be frightening to the leaders of businesses built on the past. Corporations that have traditionally leveraged command-and-control tactics will be in for the biggest jolt. "Increasingly, they will have to contend with ad hoc groups of customers who have the power to join forces online to get what they want. Indeed, customers are creating what they want themselves—designing their own software with colleagues, for instance, and declaring their opinions via blogs instead of waiting for newspapers to print their letters", as noted by Robert D. Hof in his article "The Power of Us".

In the same article, Hof quotes C.K. Prahalad, a University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business professor, "It's the democratization of industry…We are seeing the emergence of an economy of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Therein lies the case for SCRM. By allowing open-access to your operation, you wind up with a better product—one that costs less to develop while simultaneously attracting ever more customers. Want to better support your customers? Leveraging SCRM to create transparency throughout your support initiatives allows your customers to begin to help one another and/or employees to respond quicker.

So, what are your choices?

You can Ignore the change, you can Broadcast to your employees and your customers, or...you can Engage your employees and your customers. Clearly, ignoring the change will, over a relatively short period of time, render your business obsolete or completely insolvent.

Though broadcasting at least proves you've accepted the change, given that broadcasting is uni-directional in nature, it's not indicative of embracing the change. The issue with only accepting the change (as opposed to embracing it) and broadcasting to your customers is that under the premise of trust eroding, only 26% of existing and potential customers trust company information from the CEO. Only 17% trust corporate or product advertising. So, broadcast all you want, but there's only a 17% trust factor by your customers and potential customers. Consider this:

77% of potential customers refuse to buy from a company they don't trust
60% of people are likely to believe something they've heard 3-5 times
72% of people have criticized a distrusted company to a friend and/or posted a negative comment online
98% of Internet users go to the Internet to get information about the product they are going to potentially buy

(source: Edelman Trust Barometer, 2010)

Again, under this premise of change...People (like those in a social media community) are more trusted than CEO's or Employees...

Forrester: New CRM

The social customer has the power to determine a company's success or failure. Winning companies will Engage them and build their greatest competitive asset. Laggards will ignore the change or opt to broadcast, falling behind. The Social aspect of doing business is all about conversation, listening carefully, engaging, and collaborating together.

Social Customers are:

Connected (15 hours/week online 4 hours/week in social media)
Empowered (Avg Facebook user: 130 friends / Avg Twitter user: 300 followers)
Impatient (74% expect a response from a company online within 1 hour)

Embracing the change and Engaging both employees and customers have Business Impacts that include but are not limited to:

Driving Revenues
Decreasing Support Costs
Managing Online Reputation
Accelerating Innovation

_______________________________________________________

If you would like to learn more about:

How SCRM has the aforementioned business impacts | The 18 imperatives that should be assessed | The 7 SCRM implementation project success factors

Please contact us.

Cloud Business Services - Caught Between Business and IT

2010-12-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

Cloud Business Services (CBS) are moving from the cutting edge to the mainstream. In 2010, we have finally seen the real application of Cloud Business Services (CBS) in SMB/SME and enterprise environments. Decision-makers began using utility-style service offerings to improve their business processes, but despite the adoption from both Business Executives and IT Executives alike, CBS is caught in the middle of the two sides between business and IT. The problem is that traditional IT delivery models do not plan and build IT functionality quickly enough for business nor is it priced granularly enough for individual groups of users while still providing enterprise-class features and functionality.

The nature of leveraging CBS as a utility IS its power and is ultimately the game changer in IT delivery and the industry around it. Both business/IT execs realize the advantages of CBS as a utility being able to scale up/scale down and bill at a metered rate for use as well as how standardizing IT capabilities that can be delivered as a service over the Internet will underpin their business processes (and overall business model) moving forward, but how do you embrace the transformation and break down the barrier between business and IT?

The answer is that CBS provides the platform for this transformation. As business processes are becoming more infused with technology and IT continues to provide and sustain a competitive advantage for businesses, a new business model or strategic business unit (SBU) must be designed within your business in order to offer CBS. Bearing in mind that the only difference between software/platform/infrastructure and software/platform/infrastructure "as-a-service" (CBS) is that the "as-a-service" model is delivered over the Internet and the new model or SBU has to stem from the fact that all new economic value and competitive advantage must flow from this difference. It is only by creating a sustainable competitive advantage with the new model that your business will achieve the objectives of unusual profits, rapid growth and long-term success. Realigning IT inputs to the business outputs as the new model allows an organization to see CBS as the platform for tranformation and thus, a continued and sustainable competitive advantage.

Aside from realignment, elements of defining a new business model should include identifying your solution stack; those being content, process and applications, integration and middleware, and infrastructure and devices. Your company does not have to be the owner or operator of all four. For example, software-as-a-service based business process outsourcing (BPO) for billing and clearing services or card processing is now a reality; while many larger enterprises rely on Google’s messaging, collaboration, security and archiving solutions (and not providing it themselves - there are many other options for lack of better examples). So the initial question becomes which components will be provided by your company and which components will be provided by a strategic business partner? As well, which sub-markets will you be leveraging as an offering - Saas, Paas, Iaas, etc...?

Once your solution stack has been defined along with who will be providing the constituents inherent to the stack and what sub-market(s) you will be leveraging, identification and definition of your Target Markets, Strategy, Operations, et al, will be the next steps. In other words:

To whom will you sell your services? Industry or functional verticals among large enterprises, SMB's / SME's, backoffice or regulatory compliances, etc...
What's the overall game plan to creat long-term value? Pricing model, go-to market approach, business intent and value propositions, service and client definitions, etc...
How do you create and deliver what you intend to sell? Sourcing model, partnership strategy, deployment plan for the development of these capabilities, etc...

Given your initial competitive advantage will stem largely from leveraging economies of scale, it is prudent to begin with commoditizing your offering at the core and over time differentiating yourself on the edge with feature add-ons and strategic application integrations, et al. With commoditization, it is imperative to have automation and mass customization in place as the commodities game, particularly when it comes to offering "as-a-service", is all about volume. The least amount of human interaction on your side coupled with "do it yourself" assistance and add-ons, etc., from on the customer side, the better. Finally, if you're going to use the web as a conduit for offering your service, your company needs to make a serious paradigm shift into thinking and acting like a web-based company and not a traditional integration firm.

Though there are an infinite number of mix-and-match possibilties in the aforementioned with regard to formulating a new model, realignment of IT and business coupled with the definition of a new busines model (even if it's a hybrid) will ultimately bridge the gap between business and IT and allow for your CBS offering.

Despite the lag, there is still immense market potential for Cloud Computing

2010-09-12T13:32:00.000-06:00

With adoption rates and forecasts for this much-hyped technology all over the map, despite some perceived hesitancy, SMBs’ perspectives on Cloud Computing show a fairly typical adoption curve for new technology, which still leaves significant market potential for Cloud Computing.

Market potential for Cloud Computing can be attributed to four primary reasons:

Very Strong Value Proposition - IT server and other component utilization has the potential to increase up to a 75% utilization rate while realizing a reduction in IT labor costs, et al by up to 40% or more
Access - Both to Enterprise level IT (through the Cloud driving the minimum unit of purchase to being more granular) and Ubiquity (access business tools from anywhere you have an Internet connection established)
Alignment - The beginning of cloud alignment with broader technology trends and demand
The Cloud is Real - With the emergence of standards such as the Open Cloud Standards Incubator (OCSI), there is validation that the Cloud is real

To further support the market potential, having aggregated data uncovered from IDC, Gartner, Goldman Sachs, Forrester, et al, the average adoption rate among SMB's appears to be a meager 10%. Up to 90% market share still exists. With that potential and SMB budgets for 2010 up an average of 10% compared with 2009 coupled with the successes of these early adopters in turn giving others more faith in the cloud as a secure environment that enables companies to lower IT deployment and maintenance costs, while increasing flexibility for end users, cloud deployments will inevitably increase among SMBs over the next year. Additionally, with many SMB's emerging from a recession-driven, hunker-down mode and thinking once again about upgrading or expanding their technology infrastructure, the cloud will be a very attractive option based on its numerous benefits.

Some of these benefits include, but are not limited to:

Increased Efficiencies - Smaller physical footprint, less power and HVAC consumption, higher disk space and processor utilization, et al
Cost Reduction - Lower IT labor, implementation, management, and support costs, et al
Delivery - Days, not weeks, months or years
Access - Ubiquitous - as long as you have an Internet connection

As well, despite the aforementioned drivers and benefits of cloud adoption, SMB's typically have less existing infrastructure, less bureaucracy, more flexibility, and smaller capital budgets for purchasing in-house technology, thus reducing the complexity of deploying cloud solutions.

Considerations to Address:

Functionality and Flexibility - With adoption of the cloud, SMB's will discover they can afford better, enterprise level IT for items such as security, disaster recovery execution, and remote access among other things
Size and Scope - Just as no company would purchase an on-site server without first evaluating capacity, speed, reliability, etc., SMB's need to marry their requirements to the most appropriate cloud computing model
Transition and Timing - Moving to the cloud is not an all-or-nothing choice. You can move particular constituents of your organization to the cloud or potentially your entire operation
Counsel and Cost - Seek out expert, outside advisory to ascertain cloud suitability for your organization

Are the traditional IT services firms going be able to turn the corner and make the transition into offering emerging services or are there going to be several new winners?

2010-08-08T21:46:00.000-06:00

The traditional IT services business model, which revolves around systems integration, outsourcing, consulting and very large projects is about to undergo a massive transformation with the onset of "as-a-service" that may call the traditional provider business models into question.

In other words, the validity of traditional IT services will be questioned with the evolution of cloud computing, automation and on-demand software (i.e. infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), software-as-a-service (SaaS), and platform-as-a-service (PaaS)).

We have already begun to see some movement in the outsourcing business, for example:

Hewitt bought Exult a few years back
Last year, Xerox bought ACS
Convergys sold their HRO operation to Northgate Arinso recently
Booz & Co.and A.T. Kearney attempted a merger that didn’t go through

As well, The Wall Street Journal reports that:

Deloitte is looking for acquisitions
PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) is in talks to buy Diamond Management & Technology Consultants Inc.

In outsourcing, scale is key and with margins being extremely narrow, anytime you can grow the top line without measurably increasing administrative, sales or operations headcount, you improve profitability, so seeing movement in M&A makes sense. The question, however, is after all the M&A dust has settled, are those firms going be able to turn the corner and make the transition into offering emerging services or are there going to be new winners?

My opinion: That transition to newfangled services is going to create new winners. Indeed, Indian outsourcing firms are already focused on on-demand software and moving upstream to product development. In addition, new entrants that we do not think of as services providers today, such as Google and Amazon could be major players along with Salesforce.com, creating a new landscape. In this new landscape, a range of vendor dynamics will play out and after we see the aforementioned M&A and consolidation among players begin to settle, relative newcomers that sell consulting around new areas like SaaS implementation — such as Appirio, could be among the new winners in the next few years.

For instance, today’s IT services firm focuses on:

IT consulting such as strategy and business processes
Systems integration of applications
Outsourcing

Tomorrow's IT services firm will focus on:

Security as a service
Data and business intelligence as a service and the implementations that go with it
Platform as a service seats and implementations
Public cloud consulting and implementation
Public cloud services
Services integration and orchestration
Product development and R&D

Will the major players turn the corner or not?

Is Google positioning itself to do to Apple and Microsoft what Microsoft did to Apple in the 80's?

2010-05-25T23:10:00.003-06:00

Face it, in the mobile market, Windows Mobile and RIM (Blackberry) are all but dead. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile market share is declining in the face of steep competition from Apple and Google Android. Though currently RIM has market share in the business world (followed by Microsoft) of mobile, Blackberry is clearly on its last legs. Windows Mobile is a definite step above Blackberry with regard to its capabilities, but if you still have a Blackberry, it's time to upgrade from a mere messaging phone to a hand held computing device (that just happens to get and receive phone calls) - say Apple's iPhone or Google's Android operating system (OS).

Increasingly, the Google/Apple war is coming down to Android vs. iPhone OS and a major differentiator of these two OS'es from the rest of the smartphone pack is the availability of thousands of applications to extend the functionality of these phones. I would agree that in the initial stage of this battle for market dominance, applications have played a very important role. For reference, at the time of this writing, Apple's iPhone app store has just under an estimated 200,000 apps, Android just under an estimated 50,000, RIM just under an estimated 5,000 apps, and Windows Mobile just under 1,000 apps (the graphic was based on data from Feb, 2010).

I would argue, however, that in the ensuing battle, the aforementioned will fall secondary to the fact that carrier service will play a very important role. Of the current smartphone operating systems (Symbian, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Google Android, Blackberry (RIM), and webOS (Palm)), Apple is the only one that has their devices out on a SINGLE US wireless carrier and because it's on Apple's own hardware, the iPhone exists only on a SINGLE device. Though I believe that all operating systems could survive in varying levels, between apps and service, outside of iPhone and Android, the rest will either become or remain market minorities.

The fact that Android is making quick gains on iPhone from an app perspective, coupled with the fact that Google is amenable to accepting apps in their core OS and in their app market that are prevalent on the Internet (I'm in reference to Flash, et al, which Steve Jobs thinks are evil), makes for a good match up between iPhone and Android, despite the apps disparity. In addition to this, however, Google Android news (and Google in general) continues to dominate the headlines. In 2010 alone, Android Apps have doubled and Android phones are exploding. The hardware from HTC for Android and the Android software itself from Google have now exceeded the capabilities of the iPhone with Google's latest release this past week. All of this with Google Android, plus multiple carrier options, service options, and hardware options, none of which are offered for iPhone.

(Graphic from Ad Mob, March 2010)

Granted, Apple may reveal something amazing in a couple of weeks in an attempt to reclaim the top, but with what was shown with the iPhone 4 update will simply not be enough to combat the new Android phones and apps alone. The Android 2.2 update (Froyo) brings several improvements to Google's mobile platform to include Flash and an upcoming video conferencing capability, among other features. Further, Google and the hardware manufacturers and carriers offering Android are not sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what Apple may do. Even if the new iPhone does have a video conferencing capability, if Apple sticks with AT&T solely, that carrier network will implode, being dragged down into the abyss - along with the iPhone. And, without apps, RIM, Windows Mobile and others simply cannot compete.

Despite the apps, in the ensuing battle for mobile market dominance, you can find multiple devices running the Android OS on several of the major US wireless carriers. For those of us who have been in technology for a long period of time and/or who have studied and know the history of the PC, this appears to be heading down the same path that plagued Apple back in the early 80's.

Would the iPhone continue its rule if Apple broke its AT&T exclusivity?

Google's Nexus One Online Store Closure is Disappointing

2010-05-18T20:54:00.000-06:00

With the closing of Google's on-line retail store for purchasing the Nexus One, it seems clear that the majority of U.S. consumers still aren’t ready to adopt the unsubsidized handset model that Europe and other areas use. This is incredibly disappointing because the whole point of the unsubsidized model is to force carriers to compete solely on price and service – not on the types of phones they carry (chat with any iPhone user and see what they think about AT&T's service).

People here (in the U.S) gripe about their 2-year contracts, but aren’t willing to go contract free by paying full price for a new handset. The problem with this thought process is that in doing the math, if you were to buy the unsubsidized phone outright, true it's more expensive up-front at a $529.00 price point versus a $179.00 price point (when subsidized by the carrier), but typically unsubsidized plans with carriers are $20-$30 less per month for service with no contract. Therefore, in doing the math, despite having paid more up-front initially, you would actually see your return on investment (ROI) within the first twelve months.

Given that a majority of the subsidized contracts with a carrier are for a minimum of two years (or else you have an early termination fee (ETF)), not only do you save money the entire second year (and beyond) after you've purchased an unsubsidized phone, you have the flexibility to move to any carrier you want - on a moments notice - if your existing carrier's service is unsatisfactory by any means. In other words, you would have the freedom to switch phones or carriers without an ETF and pay $20-$30 less a month less per month for an unsubsidized plan than a subsidized customer does for the same plan.

With the closing of Google's online store coupled with the FCC opening the debate on national broadband policy and the threat of regulatory intervention ending handset subsidies growing larger by the day, if the unsubsidized model is curtailed, consumers will surely HAVE to demand unlocked phones.

Cloud Computing Advantages - Life is Good

2010-05-09T12:53:00.002-06:00

It's no secret that I am huge proponent of cloud computing. As Eric Schmidt said, "When the network becomes as fast as the processor, the computer hollows out and spreads across the network". The commoditization of bandwidth continues to drive the price of Internet connectivity down while increasing speed, which will eventually render the computer hollow (take a look at Google's Chrome OS).

Despite its possible security and privacy risks (which are no greater than existing computing risks - just different), Cloud Computing has six main benefits that IT organizations are certain to want to take advantage of:

Reduced Cost - Cloud technology is paid incrementally, saving organizations money over time and with little or no up-front CapEx.
Increased Storage - Organizations can store more data than on private computer systems.
Highly Automated - No longer do IT personnel need to worry about keeping software up to date, and implementation and provisioning are essentially automated now (take a look at 3Tera (recently acquired by CA)).
Flexibility - Cloud computing offers much more flexibility than past computing methods.
More Mobility - Employees can access information wherever they are, rather than having to remain at their desks.
Allows IT to Shift Focus - No longer having to worry about constant server updates and other computing issues, government organizations will be free to concentrate on innovation.

Additionally, despite the aforementioned advantages to SMB/SME and Enterprises alike, as GigaOM points out in their article "Mo’ Money: Life Is Good for Cloud Vendors", life is good for cloud computing and big data vendors because there’s plenty of money to be made.

Investors

Virtustream Completes Series A Round of Venture Capital Funding Worth Approximately $40 Million aimed at bridging the gap between corporate data centers and its own via its xStream cloud management platform.
Cloud.com (formerly VMOps) Launches, Extends Leadership Team and Announces New Funding ($11 million in a Series B round) for its CloudStack solution, which helps providers and individual companies turn their existing virtualized data centers into private clouds.
Big data startup Clustrix proved the importance of cloudscale data management, presenting itself to the world on the heels of $18 million in initial funding. Open-source database projects like Cassandra and HBase are popular among web types, but this is the type of solution that could convince some of them to give up their DIY database cultures.

Big Vendors

IBM’s purchase of Cast Iron Systems has been covered to death, but the technical gist is that the Cast Iron platform will help customers integrate on-premise and cloud-based data, making SaaS migration more palatable (and letting IBM keep their business through this transition).
New VMware property SpringSource bought GemStone Systems to ensure customers’ data layers can scale alongside the CPU layer as application demand increases. GemStone works fine on-premise and will be integrated with several SpringSource products.

Customers

Need more proof that life is good in the cloud? How about Rackspace’s first-quarter earnings call, during which it touted considerable cloud growth? The Rackspace Cloud represents only a fraction of total revenues (although it’s still growing), but more than 80 percent of the company’s nearly 100,000 customers. Some believe cloud computing has dot-com-like bubble potential, but Rackspace’s customer count is no mirage, and I don’t believe vendors like IBM, CA and VMware would invest as heavily as they are into a model for which they don’t foresee high ROI. Some cloud startups will fail, no doubt, but unlike so many dot-coms, cloud companies have real products that will find their way into other vendors’ portfolios and make money for someone.

Google - Finalist in the 2010 SC Awards for outstanding achievement in IT security.

2010-01-26T00:46:00.000-07:00

We all know that threats continue to accelerate as spammers and hackers exploit new methods to attack your communications infrastructure. Attacks are targeted against all of your electronic communications channels — email, instant messaging, the web, mobile devices and VoIP. Having evaluated and used multiple collaboration products from Microsoft, Oracle, and my own home-spun servers as well as various online solutions like hotmail, and Google, it has always been difficult to manage false positives when it comes to spam not to mention other important email security aspects such as spyware, phishing, virus control and attachment filtering.

With that in mind, Google Enterprise (and Gmail) is by far the best in being secure, easy to set up and easy to use. Having used Gmail since it's inception back in 2004, with virtually no spam and absolutely no malicious content passing through, based on security and ease of use, we now use Google Enterprise within our organizations (Virdavo, SIT Group, and QRO) for collaboration as well as recommend it to companies with whom we consult.

Though the finalist will not be announced until March, Google Message Security, powered by Postini, was nominated for SC's award in the Best Managed Security Service category from more than 600 entries across 31 technology categories. Illena Armstrong, editor-in-chief for SC indicates that the finalists in this year’s SC Awards including Google, represent a cross-section of the security industry’s best-in-class.

Widely respected in the industry for more than a decade, the SC Awards is the IT security industry's leading global awards program, recognizing the professionals, products, and companies providing security solutions that not only protect organizations today, but are also able to identify emerging threats as the landscape of online security evolves.

Postini, acquired by Google back in 2007 stops spam, viruses, phishing, directory harvest and other message attacks as well as instant messaging and web systems.

App Favorites - 2009

2010-01-24T18:51:00.001-07:00

Based on a request from a friend back in late September of '09, I have compiled a list of my favorite applications from 2009. Bear in mind that this does not necessarily mean that the apps themselves were created and/or made available in 2009, they're simply my favorite from 2009. The categories listed are in alphabetical order and under some of the categories there are multiple app listings. The app listings are in no particular order of relevance and for those categories that have multiple apps listed, the denotation "CU" indicates that the app is one I currently use. I have evaluated and used or am using every app on this list. Nearly everything on this list is free to use and is either web-based or multi-OS friendly (i.e Linux, Mac, MS).

Please feel free to post your favorite apps - I'm always looking for apps to evaluate.

Accounting, Billing, Invoicing, Estimating & Contracts

Freshbooks - www.freshbooks.com (CU)
Echosign - www.echosign.com (CU)

Audio Editing

Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net
Jokosher - www.jokosher.org (CU)
Ardour - www.ardour.org

Business Process

The Process Factory - www.theprocessfactory.com (CU)
gStepOne - www.gstepone.com (CU)

Calendars & Scheduling

TimeBridge - www.timebridge.com
Tungle - http://tungle.me/Home (CU)

Charts, Diagrams, and Whiteboards

Gliffy - www.gliffy.com (CU)
Mind Meister - www.mindmeister.com (CU)
Scrib Link - www.scriblink.com

Collaboration

37 Signals - www.37signals.com (CU)
Tokbox - www.tokbox.com (CU)
Yammer - www.yammer.com

Creating Online Forms

Formspring - formspring.com (CU)

Customer Relationship Management, Customer Service & Contact Management

Zendesk - www.zendesk.com (CU)
Lead Vine - www.leadvine.com (CU)
Tactile CRM - www.tactilecrm.com (CU)
Honeypitch - www.honeypitch.com (CU)

Feedback

Kumquat - http://hellokumquat.com (CU)

Google (yes, I'm a Googlephile)

Google Pack - http://pack.google.com (CU)
Google Apps - www.google.com/apps (CU)
Google Voice - www.google.com/voice (CU)
Google Wave - https://wave.google.com (CU)
Google DNS - http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns (CU)
Google Analytics - www.google.com/analytics (CU)
Google Merchant Center - www.google.com/merchants (CU)
Google Fast Flip - http://fastflip.googlelabs.com (CU)
Google Squared - www.google.com/squared (CU)
Google Translate - http://translate.google.com (CU)
Google Chrome - www.google.com/chrome (CU)
Google Desktop - http://desktop.google.com (CU)
Google Gears - http://gears.google.com (CU)
Google Sketchup - http://sketchup.google.com (CU)
Google Earth - http://earth.google.com (CU)

Home Server

Amahi - www.amahi.org (CU)

IM

Meebo - www.meebo.com (CU)

Pidgin - www.pidgin.im (CU)

Mass Marketing

Joopz - www.joopz.com (CU)
Campaign Monitor - www.campaignmonitor.com (CU)

Media Players

pulpTunes - www.pulptunes.com (CU)
Songbird - http://getsongbird.com/product (CU)
VLC - www.videolan.org/vlc (CU)
Miro - www.getmiro.com (CU)

Multi-Browser Bookmark Sync

X Marks - www.xmarks.com (CU)

Multi-Media

Linux MCE - http://www.linuxmce.org (CU)
Boxee - www.boxee.tv (CU)
Bitly TV - www.bitly.tv (CU)
PlayOn - www.playon.tv
XBox Media Center - http://xbmc.org

Online Backup

Mozy - www.mozy.com (CU)
iDrive - www.idrive.com
Carbonite - www.carbonite.com

Online Storage

Google Docs - http://docs.google.com (CU)
Dropbox - www.dropbox.com
Files Anywhere - www.filesanywhere.com

Operating Systems

Local Install (non-browser based)

Ubuntu - www.ubuntu.com (CU)

Browser Based(Public Cloud)

Glide - www.glidedigital.com
Schmedley Gamma - http://schmedley.com

Browser Based (Private Cloud)

WebOS - www.stone-ware.com/cloud/products/webos.html

Peering / Torrent / FTP

GBridge - www.gbridge.com
Transmission - www.transmissionbt.com (CU)
FileZilla - http://filezilla-project.org (CU)
BitTorrent - http://www.bittorrent.com
Vuze - www.vuze.com

Phone, Phone Systems, & Voicemail

Google Voice - www.google.com/voice (CU)
YouMail - www.youmail.com (CU)
Slydial - www.slydial.com
Fring - www.fring.com (CU)
Virdavo - www.virdavo.com (CU)
Free PBX - www.freepbx.org (CU)
Zoiper - www.zoiper.com (CU)
Counterpath - www.counterpath.com

Photo Editing

GIMP - www.gimp.org (CU)
Aviary - http://aviary.com
Picasa - http://picasa.google.com (CU)

Presentations

Google Presentation - http://docs.google.com (CU)
sliderocket - www.sliderocket.com
TTM - www.textthemob.com

Productivity Suite

OpenOffice - www.openoffice.org (CU)

Secure Single Sign On

OpenID - http://openid.net
myOnelogin - www.myonelogin.com

Social Networking

FriendFeed - http://friendfeed.com (CU)
Ning - www.ning.com

Synchronization to Google Docs

OffiSync (for Microsoft users) - www.offisync.com
Open Office - http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/ooo2gd (CU)

Time Tracking

Harvest - www.getharvest.com

URL Shortener (with tracking)

Bitly - http://bit.ly (CU)

Video Editing

PiTiVi - www.pitivi.org

What's new in Ubuntu's Karmic Koala (9.10) release?

2009-11-02T17:54:00.000-07:00

Ubuntu Linux has launched its new operating system (OS), Karmic Koala (KK), with the latest release last week of Ubuntu Linux 9.10, the successor to the release code 9.04 named Jaunty Jackalope. As Linux matures, it is becoming more accessible to the average user and Karmic Koala is one step closer to that eventuality.

For those unfamiliar with the OS, Ubuntu Linux, based on the popular Debian distro, is arguably the most popular consumer desktop Linux distributions around right now. Each new version gets an animal name, sequenced alphabetically: Hardy Heron (HH - 8.04), Intrepid Ibex (II - 8.10), Jaunty Jackelope (JJ - 9.04), Karmic Koala (KK - 9.10) and after Karmic comes Lucid Lynx (LL), due out next spring (I'm placing my bets on April). Version numbers are based on the year and month of release (hence 9.10, released in 2009, month 10).

The installation image is live, so you can run it directly from a CD or USB Flash Drive without having to completely wipe your system (or make any changes at all - with exception of the boot order perhaps). You simply boot from the CD or USB to experience the live OS, with no actual installation required (hence being live). This allows you to try the Ubuntu OS, regardless of the actual OS already installed on your system. The download itself is relatively small at 690 MB (you can download it at http://www.ubuntu.com) and if you do decide to install Ubuntu (as opposed to running it live), the installation is pretty straightforward.

Official system requirements are modest; you can likely use whatever hardware you have lying around, even if it can no longer run Windows (I have linux installed on an old Win 98 machine....that will no longer run Windows).

What's New?

The kernel is based on Linux kernel version 2.6.31
The new desktop is based on Gnome 2.28
New video driver technology enhances performance for Intel-based graphics
Boot time has been improved
Power management has been improved
Grub 2 is now the default loader
File system has been updated to ext4
Login Manager has been cleaned up

Though the aforementioned is probably alphabet soup to non-Linux users, it represents important changes that will improve the overall user experience. It's clean and functional and set up to make life easy for the Windows users interested in the segue to Linux.

Additionally, the cloud has also been incorporated into KK as well with the onset of Ubuntu One (https://one.ubuntu.com). Ubuntu One provides 2 GB of free, Internet-based storage that allows KK users the ability to store, sync, and share files - all accessible through the Applications menu.

A generous batch of software is installed by default:

Office Apps / Email:

You get OpenOffice (which includes a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software - all compatible with MS Office and Google Docs). E-mail, address book and calendar are courtesy of Evolution, which plays well with users of Microsoft Outlook.

Collaboration / VoIP:

The previous version's Pidgin instant messaging (IM) software is replaced by Empathy, which also easily connects to multiple services such as Yahoo, Gmail, MSN, Jabber, AOL, QQ and others, and can share connections among applications. (It's based on Telepathy, if you're curious). As well, it comes loaded with the Ekiga softphone for VoIP.

Browsing:

The installed Web browser is Firefox (which upgrades to 3.5 once the OS is installed)

Music / Multimedia / Photo:

F-Spot is the default photo editor, and can upload pictures to Flickr, Facebook, Picasa or other services. For audio, you get Rhythmbox which allows you to download, store, buy and play music, or to stream video. There are also utilities such as Gimp, a graphics editing program.

Beyond this, the Software Center contains an amazing selection of programs of all kinds (currently all free) for you to download and install. It contains categories that include but are not limited to:

Accessories
Education
Games
Graphics
Internet
Programming
Science
Sound and Video
System and Office
Universal Access

The Software Center also acts like the Add/Remove Programs app in Windows; you can view and alter installed software as well as exploring other software available for download.

As Linux matures, it's becoming more and more of an OS accessible to the average user. KK is another step in that direction. There are still a few foreign concepts for a Windows convert to absorb, but on the whole Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala, is a package that won't be a horrible stretch for the novice, yet contains enhancements for the Linux guru as well.

And, as always, the price is right – it's free.

Sustainable IT is more than just power management and virtualization. (Part 2 of a 5 part series)

2009-09-13T17:40:00.004-06:00

Part Two - Power Management

Certainly, leveraging virtualization and power management strategies are a start, particularly in the data center, but virtualization is a different game entirely when it comes to the desktop. Though I will touch on it in more depth in part three, Utility Computing, it will be a long time before going down the path of running virtual PCs on the server and accessing them through thin client / dumb terminal configurations becomes the norm. The reality is that most organizations in the short term will continue to leverage regular PC's (fat clients). Since migrating to a thin client type environment is not a reality in the near term, the energy question needs to be thought about differently in that the challenge boils down to optimizing the power consumption of desktop machines that are typically idle for the majority of time they are switched on.

Controlling the state of machines in terms of their sleep/wake cycle, is imperative. In practice, a configuration exhibiting a high degree of runtime energy efficiency, but has no active policy to transition to a low power state when idle consumes considerably more power than a less efficient machine whose state is properly managed. Third party solutions, such as Verdiem and 1E, can help to enable/enforce centralized power management. Using such technology, you can not only cure PC insomnia from a policy enforcement perspective, but also allow real-time remote control of power state so machines can be woken up for backup or software distribution purposes then put to sleep again afterwards. So, if you are serious about saving energy across a large PC landscape, the options are there.

Economic, Environmental, and Social Impacts

To understand the positive impacts of the aforementioned, let's consider an organization that has 100 employees.

The Economic Impact: Simply turning off all 100 PC's at night consistently for a one year period would yeild an approximate $7,800.00 savings (based on cost reduction (from power reduction), coupled with potential utlity and tax credits). Bear in mind that this example is based solely on the PC's and does not include CRT's or LCD's, which would yield additional savings.

The Environmental Impact: Approximately 45,732 kW h would be saved per year - a reduction of approximately 70,427 lbs of CO2 per year. This is the equivalant of taking roughly six cars off of the road for an entire year!

The Social Impact: Socially Responsible. May meet potential future regulatory needs. May meet investor and consumer demands.

(Source: EPA and EnergyStar)

Additional Considerations

In part one of this series, I mentioned that the approach must be holistic in nature. Therefore, careful consideration must be taken with regard to business decisions made around hardware procurement as it pertains to the production of the computer hardware, as well as the manufacture, distribution, and recycling of that hardware during its lifecycle.

Significantly more energy is tied up in the manufacture and distribution of a computer than the energy that is expended for usage during a computer's hardware lifecycle. This is due to the amount of energy it takes to produce silicon (among other components), coupled with the relatively short usage cycle (typically 36 months or less) and how far the PC has to travel to get into our hands. Prodding your technology manufacturers for what they're doing to incorporate power reduction into their manufacuring processes, and making a decision as to who you do business with based on part by this is both pertinent and very important.

Another important question for your manufacturer or distributor when making a decision as to who to do business with is where are the machines coming from? Though nearly all parts and most manufacture is done overseas, once the hardware that you're considering is in the US (or whatever country you're located in), is it coming from the closest distribution facility?

Finally, make sure to recycle your equipment and to recycle it PROPERLY. Do not simply store it, and DO NOT throw it away. Be VERY selective as to who you trust to recycle the hardware (recall the 60 minutes coverage on Toxic E-Waste). As an alternative to recycling, you could also donate the hardware to a school or non-profit for a potential tax write-off. If you think the hardware is too antiquated for use, as long as the computer can boot up, stay tuned for my next piece, Utility Computing.

A final thought....Shift the onus of cost reduction tied to power reduction onto IT

A means by which to get power management folded into your corporate IT strategy as a priority would be to shift part of the onus of power management onto the IT dept and off of facilities. By incenting your IT department (for example, IT would receive a budget bonus equal to 10% of the cost savings based on their contribution to power reduction)
you will inevitably not only see a quick reduction in cost, but a quick ROI on any CapEx spent on power management applications, et al. Certainly, this can be applied to facilities as well with regard to HVAC, lighting, building automation, etc.

Stay tuned for part three - Utility Computing

Sustainable IT is more than just power management and virtualization. (Part 1 of a 5 part series)

2009-09-08T21:29:00.000-06:00

When it comes to being green, most end-users (and many solution providers as well) are lost in a forest of hype. Though almost everyone agrees on the benefits of enhancing computing power while curtailing energy consumption, few organizations have truly harnessed the potential of Green IT, with regard to sustainability. Having been effectively "Greenwashed" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwash), simply managing power consumption misses the full opportunity. IT has a much bigger role to play in improving business sustainability and achieving business efficiencies, effectiveness, and cost savings, while reducing carbon footprint. As well, it can enable different ways of doing business, support more efficient ways of doing business, and support the way employees fulfill their duties. Through this, businesses will find that adopting certain technologies and behaviors actually reduces operating costs and improves efficiency, bringing the realization that environmental responsibility doesn’t have to come at the expense of profitability.

Where does the biggest opportunity lie?

The answer is viewing sustainability holistically from an IT perspective. An organization must promote power reduction, utility computing, collaboration (through collaborative tools), and managed services, in an effort to reduce carbon footprint. These are the four pillars of sustainable IT. Each one of the pillars has a positive economic, environmental and social impact, and as such, an organization may find additionally that they are satisfying other business, employee, customer, investor, and potential regulatory demands while improving Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives. To realize the positive impacts of Sustainable IT on your business, you must formulate an IT strategy that encompasses sustainable IT and whose propagation can be governed into culture through management and fostered into practice by the organization as a whole.

Stay tuned for part two - Power Management

Unexplained Phenomenon

2009-09-05T10:45:00.000-06:00

Snippet from Associated Content's Article that I found interesting:

Google has created a classic chicken or egg conundrum. Are "unexplained phenomenon" and "top 10 unexplained phenomena" top search terms because of the Google UFO doodle - which suggests that Google is purposely driving traffic to those topics - or did Google create the UFO logo in response to the popularity of the search terms "unexplained phenomenon" and "top 10 unexplained phenomena"?

Read more here.

Google Voice

2009-09-03T21:03:00.001-06:00

In today’s business (and to a certain extent, personal) communication scenario, people have multiple numbers and phones. You have a main local work number, perhaps a toll free work number, a work DID (direct inward dial), one or more cellular phone numbers, perhaps even a home number. Reviewing my contact database, there are a few contacts in my database that literally have more than half a dozen active phone numbers.

For the most part, in the business world, alleviating the need for multiple numbers (for people to call) can be handled through call routing technologies (particularly with VoIP, i.e. Find Me/Follow Me, bridged extensions, simultaneous ring, etc...). From a personal perspective, however, technology like this does not necessarily exist - at least not affordably.

From a personal perspective, we need a method that moves us away from calling numbers and toward calling people. It’s time to upgrade the method we use to contact our friends. Stuck in the 150-year-old paradigm of using phone numbers, enter Google Voice. Google Voice is one of those great services none of us knew we needed until it came along. With Google Voice, calling a Google Voice number, you don’t need to know or have to figure out which number to call. Simply call your Google Voice number and it will simultaneously ring any number of phone numbers and/or devices you choose.

I was a beta member of Grand Central before Google purchased the service, so I was grandfathered in to Google Voice some time ago (Google recently announced that it’s honoring queued-up Google Voice invites, so if you requested one, watch your mailbox for entry details). Using the service, I have calls routed to my cell phone, home office phone, and laptop softphone simultaneously, so you need just the one Google Voice number to contact me. Aside from being free (as are most Google services), my voicemails are transcribed for me, Google voice has call recording, and a widget that you can imbed into your website(s) for click to call, providing other value-added features that regular telephone service can’t provide (at least not for free).

Either way, now that it's here, the only major suggestion (there are several "minor" suggestions I may blog about later)with regard to change that could shape it into an even better productivity tool, would be tight, smart integration with other Google Apps/Services. Google's web applications already take some heat for inconsistent visual styles, as well as being strangely disconnected in their contact and identity use. Voice would be a great chance to start meshing them all together.

Imagine reading a message in Gmail and replying to it with a quick SMS or phone call (if you have that contact's phone number entered). In more exciting fashion, you could record a call with somebody, get a transcription (perhaps with a "Pro" account or pay-per-word plan, if free doesn't work), then push it into a Google Document to work with. Contacts you invite to a group event from Google Calendar could be SMS messaged to RSVP or for a reminder, with a Maps link or directions to the location. These are things anyone can accomplish using multiple Google services, of course, but if Voice is meant to centralize your phone life using Google's cloud, it shouldn't require having multiple tabs open to monitor inboxes that are different, but can be processed from the same set of contacts.

Response to the Denver Post Article: Gmail knocked offline for 'majority' of users

2009-09-02T11:54:00.001-06:00

Here's the article: Denver Post Article

Here's my response:

Despite Google's mail (or apps for your domain) web interface being down, email could still be accessed via IMAP or POP. This only works if you have IMAP/POP enabled before any downtime, however.

If you're an enterprise customer (apps for your domain), for business continuity, you could always point your MX Record to a third-party proxy such as MX Logic (now McAfee) or Postini (which Google already uses), in which case email first routes to MX Logic (or Postini) for scrubbing (spam et al) prior to it being sent to gmail (or apps for your domain) for delivery. From a business continuity perspective, the aforementioned services have the ability to grant you web-based access to emails in the event of a server outage (be that an Exchange server or other email server on-site or gmail).

Regarding Google doing planned or routine maintenance: Since they're global, it's 2:30 in the afternoon somewhere. There is no "good" time for them to do maintenance or uprades necessarily.

Chrome OS may be the answer to Web apps running like native desktop apps

2009-09-01T22:45:00.000-06:00

A potential downside to web applications in today's environment is the fact that your desktop OS (and anything else that resides on your desktop - third party apps, malware, spyware, etc...) chews up processing resources, degrading performance with regard to rendering web apps. This in turn affects the web app's ability to feel like a native desktop application. The commoditization of Internet bandwidth (the fact that large Internet pipes are cheap!) certainly compensates for this in certain situations, but ofcourse, bandwidth can also be a constraint (if you don't have a large Internet pipe - relatively speaking).

Google’s recent announcement that it's working on a new lightweight open source operating system (Google Chrome OS), running on top of a Linux kernel, means the browser basically becomes the OS - no native apps (or other junk) chewing up processing resources. Netbooks running Chrome OS (its initial target platform — although Google isn’t only targeting netbooks) will effectively be “web app optimized,” running web apps in preference to native desktop applications (with, apparently, near instant access to applications like email).

Though there are already a few "Web OS" type applications that exist such as Good OS (http://www.thinkgos.com), which is based on Ubuntu (Linux) and Eye OS (http://www.eyeos.info), which is completely web-based, so far, there are no "Web OS" that are custom tailored to be installed on a netbook or laptop, optimized for the web and web apps, and that boots directly into a browser. That means Chrome OS could herald a slew of new web apps taking advantage of of the performace offered by a lightning-fast web app OS. The entire OS will effectively be a highly-optimized browser, without any desktop sludge to slow it down. Chrome (the browser) is already fast, but by stripping everything else away, we will see web apps that feel much more like native desktop applications.

From a company perspective, some advantages, aside from web apps running like today's desktop apps, would include but not be limited to:

Security - No information residing on the machine locally. This is a benefit should a netbook/laptop get stolen or misplaced, or should an employee decide to leave the company (and not immediately return the asset).
Cost Avoidance - Minimal or no licensing coupled with an extended hardware lifecycle - you can envision a netbook/laptop/workstation lasting much longer than the typical hardware refresh of three years, given that hardly anything runs directly on the hardware itself - it's all in the cloud.
Lower Carbon Footprint - Netbooks consume less power than traditional laptops, not to mention, since you're extending your hardware's investment horizon, you're recycling hardware at half the rate of what would normally occur under a traditional hardware refresh.

Does the Web Level the Intelligence Playing Field?

2009-09-01T01:11:00.000-06:00

Does the Web Level the Intelligence Playing Field?

Today (and moving forward), the desktop operating system is largely irrelevant. The Web is the only OS worth coding for. It is "The Machine". Nowadays, it doesn't matter what device you use, as long as it runs on the Web (OS). You will reach the same distributed computer whether you log on via phone, PDA, laptop, or HDTV.

In the 1990s, the "players" called that convergence. They peddled the image of multiple kinds of signals entering our lives through one box - a box they hoped to control. To their dismay, in the near future, this image will be turned inside out, because in reality, each device is a differently shaped window that peers into the global computer - The Machine. Nothing converges. The Machine is an unbounded entity that will take a billion windows to glimpse even part of. It is what you'll see on the other side of any screen.

Who will write the software that makes this contraption useful and productive? We will....in fact, we are. When we post and then tag pictures on the community photo album Flickr, or post something on MySpace, or Facebook, et al, we are teaching The Machine to give names to images. The thickening links between caption and picture form a neural net that can learn. Think of the 100 billion times per day humans click on a Web page as a way of teaching The Machine what we think is important. Each time we forge a link between words, we teach It an idea. Wikipedia encourages its citizen authors to link each fact in an article to a reference citation. Over time, a Wikipedia article becomes totally underlined in blue as ideas are cross-referenced. That massive cross-referencing is how brains think and remember. It is how neural nets answer questions. It is how our global skin of neurons will adapt autonomously and acquire a higher level of knowledge and ultimately become artificial intelligence....The machine in which we live (see my post from August 29, 2009).

The human brain has no department full of programming cells that configure the mind. Rather, brain cells program themselves simply by being used. Likewise, our questions program The Machine to answer questions. We think we are merely wasting time when we surf mindlessly or blog an item, but each time we click a link, we strengthen a node somewhere in the Web OS, thereby programming The Machine by using It.

What will most surprise us is how dependent we will be on what The Machine knows - about us and about what we want to know. We already find it easier to Google something a second or third time rather than remember it ourselves (how many times do you reference your cell phone for a contact's info as opposed to memorizing a phone number?). The more we teach this megacomputer, the more it will assume responsibility for our knowing. It will become our memory. Then it will become our identity. Many people, when divorced from the Machine, won't feel like themselves - as if they'd had a lobotomy.

Metaphorically, the Web being neural, the Internet is a Dendrite. As our global infrastructure becomes more robust, it is the Myelin Sheath, and our access points - phone, PDA, laptop, or HDTV - us, we are the Axons.

As long as we're plugged into The Machine, will The Machine level the intelligence playing field as long as you know how to "Google"?

Build a full featured Web 2.0 CRM from Scratch

2009-08-31T19:18:00.000-06:00

Web 2.0 is a major shift in computing because in the new paradigm, the Internet itself becomes the computing platform (see my previous post). That is, a "true" Web 2.0 application — whatever that is — would be (nearly) indistinguishable from a desktop application. Like a desktop program, the ultimate Web 2.0 application would have immediate feedback and would update information without a deliberate refresh. The new breed of application, which runs primarily on Internet servers, is generally understood to be dynamic and collaborative, embraces an appeal to smaller niches in the community and not just the largest audience, and still remains simple and intuitive - take Google Apps (http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html), Ning (http://www.ning.com), Tokbox (http://www.tokbox.com) or even Facebook (http://www.facebook.com), for example. With all of the noise over Web 2.0, it can be hard to determine exactly how it might benefit your company.

How does it benefit your company?

As an example, let's look at Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Traditionally, you chose a CRM application that was either hosted (Saas) or client/server based. There are several to choose from: Salesforce.com, Zoho (http://crm.zoho.com), Sugar (http://www.sugarcrm.com), etc. Each of these includes the core constituents of a CRM - Sales, Marketing, Accounting, Project Management, Support, Shared Contacts and Calendars, and a sycn of some sort with email. Within each of these CRM apps, you essentially get all of the constituents out of the box (or by paying for licensing), along with a steep learning curve and an obscene price tag for implementation (oh, and additional fees for customization too!).

Now let's look at Web 2.0

With Web 2.0, there are several applications designed specifically for a particular task. In other words, instead of a CRM that comes out of the box with all the constituents (one size fits all), you have the opportunity to select your own applications to perform a particular task and tie them all together. For example, you may try LiteAccounting (http://liteaccounting.com) for your accounting, or Mojo (http://www.mojohelpdesk.com) for your helpdesk. Through open API's (application program interfaces), widgets, or portals, all of these diparate applications can talk to one another and provide information.

The result: Less expense, quicker implementation time (almost immediate), lower learning curve (due to the intuitive nature of the apps), and no "hard-core" customization - simply choose an app that suits your business' needs best (CAVEAT: Not all apps will work together, but a lot will).

Building a Web 2.0 CRM from scratch

First, get your CRM base. For our purposes, we chose TactileCRM - http://www.tactilecrm.com

Then, in no particular order, obtain the following:

Help Desk - we chose Zendesk - http://www.zendesk.com
Accounting - we chose Freshbooks - http://www.freshbooks.com
Project Management - we chose Basecamp - http://www.basecamphq.com
Marketing - we chose Campaign Monitor - http://www.campaignmonitor.com
Shared Contacts, Calendars, and Email - we chose Google Apps - http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html

Once these have been obtained (each of these comes with a free 30 day trial), you can use the API's to integrate everything together. The Zendesk and Freshbooks API's allow for views within TactileCRM so that you can see both support tickets and invoicing (et al) in Tactile when you have an organization or contact pulled up. The tactile API allows you to integrate with Google for mail and calendar functions. As well, the Tactile and Campaign Monitor API's allow you to manage marketing campaign's to your prospects and customers and finally, the Zendesk, Freshbooks, and Basecamp API's allow you to track time (tied to support tickets and projects) as well as invoice your clients.

Speaking of Web 2.0.....Stay tuned for Google Wave.....

http://wave.google.com

The Web is a machine in which we live

2009-08-29T10:11:00.000-06:00

The Web has become the OS for a megacomputer that encompasses the Internet, all its services, all peripheral chips and affiliated devices from scanners to satellites, and the billions of human minds entangled in this global network. This gargantuan Machine already exists in a primitive form. In the coming decade, it will evolve into an integral extension not only of our senses and bodies but our minds.

Thin about it: The Machine acts like a very large computer with top-level functions that operate at approximately the clock speed of an early PC. It processes 1 million emails each second, which essentially means network email runs at 1MHz. Same with Web searches. Instant messaging runs at 100KHz, SMS at 1KHz. The Machine's total external RAM is several hundres terabytes. In any one second, 10 terabits can be coursing through its backbone, and each year it generates more than 20 exabytes of data. Its distributed "chip" spans 1 billion active PCs, which is approximately the number of transistors in one PC.

This planet-sized computer is comparable in complexity to a human brain. Both the brain and the Web have hundreds of billions of neurons (or Web pages). Each biological neuron sprouts synaptic links to thousands of other neurons, while each Web page branches into dozens of hyperlinks. That adds up to a trillion "synapses" between the static pages on the Web. The human brain has about 100 times that number - but brains are not doubling in size every few years.

The Machine is.

The Web - 2015

2009-08-28T10:18:00.000-06:00

The Web continues to evolve from a world ruled by mass media and mass audiences to one ruled by messy media and messy participation. How far can this frenzy of creativity go? Encouraged by Web-enabled sales, 175,000 books were published and more than 30,000 music albums were released in the US in 2004. At the same time, 14 million blogs launched worldwide. Can you imagine what these numbers are today? The numbers are escalating at a staggering rate. A simple extrapolation suggests that in the near future, everyone alive will (on average) write a song, author a book, make a video, craft a weblog, and code a program. This idea is less outrageous than the notion 150 years ago that someday everyone would write a letter or take a photograph.

What happens when the data flow is asymmetrical - but in favor of creators? What happens when everyone is uploading far more than they download? If everyone is busy making, altering, mixing, and mashing, who will have time to sit back and veg out? Who will be a consumer?