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HP: 50% of Organizations Use Non-IT Sanctioned Clouds

2012-04-24T22:05:39Z

For traditional hardware vendors who have strong relationships with information technology departments, the idea that cloud computing, one of the hottest trends to ever hit the technology space is being purchased without the consent or guidance of IT is quite scary. If you’ve been selling servers to a company for decades and all of a sudden the employees within that organization start to buy their own resources, effectively sidestepping an established relationship, you can rapidly see yourself disintermediated.

In fact, 50% of organizations use non-IT sanctioned clouds according to research sanctioned by HP. Moreover the company found 18% of companies were unsure if their users were using cloud computing services without the knowledge of IT. Finally, they anticipate private and public cloud growth to double by 2020 meaning this is a problem that isn’t getting smaller.

But for a vendor like HP the challenge is how do you become a cloud provider of consequence in a field which has other major players like Amazon and a bevy of data centers and other companies providing hosted platform and software as a service products?

The HP answer is a converged approach, offering a public cloud – HP Cloud Services which will provide platform as a service as well as a MySQL service as well as a block storage service. In addition, to manage hybrid delivery environments the company’s Cloud Maps utilizes customer application templates which work with HP CloudSystem to improve application deployment speed.

In addition, the company’s Service Virtualization 2.0 allows the testing of cloud and/or mobile services to be done without production system disruption through the use of a simulated, virtualized environment.

The company has also announced solutions to help deliver cloud services over legacy networks, solutions for enhanced cloud security and network cloud optimization services. There is also a solution for private cloud customers which includes unified communications.

In a conversation with HP’s Marc Hamilton, VP of HPC Sales at the company, he pointed out this announcement is more than just competition to Amazon as many news outlets reported, it is the first cloud announcement under Meg Whitman and under this umbrella news, all the various HP groups are working together to provide a solution far beyond just a public cloud.

Asked if IBM is the real competitor here, he responded that it isn’t clear that IBM has a single stack, hardware, software and services which can be used across the spectrum of the cloud – traditional IT infrastructure, private clouds, managed cloud services and the public cloud.

In terms of cloud standards, Hamilton points out that there won’t be a single standard for cloud but he is happy to have a number of cloud vendors supporting HP’s Cloud Matrix including AT&T and IBM.

Interestingly, the cloud market isn’t too unlike telecom when it comes to emerging markets meaning that many parts of the world skipped copper and POTs and went directly to IP communications over fiber or even skipped that and went to wireless. Similarly, there will be a huge opportunity to deliver cloud-based services to parts of the world where they will skip purchasing their own infrastructure and may not even have the local power available to build a data center. We also discussed how in the tech world, the same trend is taking place where companies like Instagram jump right into the cloud without the need to deploy their own hardware.

And thus the massive growth predictions for the cloud market.

As HP becomes a more significant cloud computing provider, we can expect its extensive high performance computing or HPC expertise to come into play. The company has already built a top 5 supercomputer and is working with ARM processors, the latest 3-D Intel SandyBridge chips as well as GPU processors.

Point being, the company is well positioned from a hardware perspective to provide massively scaling horsepower to its customers… Now the question is will their holistic approach to providing hybrid cloud solutions as well as their desire to work with carrier partners will accelerate their position in the market allowing them to take advantage of opportunities in the enterprise space where security and the need for hybrid public/private solutions will only grow.

Certainly the hope is that the company will not only be successful but in the process get companies to rely more on their IT departments for their cloud computing needs so the decades-long HP relationship will be retained and solidified.

For more on cloud-computing check out TMC's Cloud Computing Magazine as well as TMC's Cloud For SMB Expo.

The Adaptive Computing Ace Band

2012-04-10T02:07:49Z

I am here at the Adaptive Computing Moabcon conference in Park City, UT and the band playing at the opening reception is made up of company employees - mostly techies and one marketer. Pretty impressive. The company had an audition process to pick the best talent and then the band was formed.

YouTube Video

No word on whether the group will be quitting their day jobs. :-)

Neustar Aims to Make Mobile App Development Easier

2012-03-20T15:26:39Z

With over half a million apps in the Apple App Store alone one might argue that developers have all the tools they have to develop compelling applications but what if there was a way to take traditional apps and integrate them more closely with carrier networks and big data analytics allowing them to be more powerful, spur increased consumer spending while greasing the wheels of mobile commerce and more?

Recently Jean Foster and Steve Edwards at Neustar showed me their Intelligent Cloud service which integrates rich anonymized databases from TARGUSInfo with access to carrier networks and other information to accelerate developer productivity and to frankly enable applications to become better drivers of value for consumers and revenue for advertisers and merchants.

One demo they showed me involved a gift card where a user scans the bar code associated with it. At this point a unique URL is passed to a browser and opened on the mobile device allowing a consumer to check balance information, make a payment and connect their cell phone to the card. Then a consumer can opt in for marketing information and can further text message to get a response with balance information on the card. Then they can scan a code on a product to have the amount debited from the card. In this manner the cell phone becomes the card meaning the card doesn’t need to be used again.

It is worth mentioning that Neustar handles the messaging and communications in the above demo.

The company has covered North America with carrier partnerships and recently Telus has signed up to the platform enabling developers to integrate the best of Neustar APIs with those from Telus allowing such things as mobile payments and messaging.

Neustar also provides communications for enterprises – for example their Mobile Enterprise Services solution allows an HR department to communicate rapidly with workers not only via SMS but via email and desktop solutions. This solution is powered by the company’s Text Everywhere service.

They also have a Geofence solution enabling marketing based upon location. Partner ZOS enables the company to provide its customers the ability to provide messages and offers when users are near specific locations.

Neustar has a storied history as a trusted third party providing SMS short codes, DNS look ups LNP information and more. They believe this position in the market allows them to be the optimal partner at a time when privacy and consent are becoming so important.

Last year the company purchased TARGUSInfo and is now able to correlate anonymized data from 200 independent databases allowing an app developer for example to see if a cell phone user is likely to be able to purchase a luxury car, etc.

Neustar is a fascinating organization as it has its hands in myriad areas of technology and communications – this move into big data, analytics and mobile enablement for developers seems like a smart diversification move as many of its legacy markets begin to slow.

And certainly with all the recent security challenges facing mobile app developers, it is possible the company really is at the right place at the right time to ensure increased user, carrier and ecosystem trust.

Will Nimble 2.0 take Social CRM Mainstream?

2012-02-14T17:01:00Z

Recently consumer products manufacturer P&G – one of the largest advertising spenders at over $9B announced it will cut its marketing headcount in-part because advertising on Facebook and Google is more efficient. The maker of Gillette and Pantene products is not alone; in-fact the business world is focusing heavily on social media including Google+ and Twitter.

But while it is understood by many web-savvy companies that social is important – how many of them are embracing social CRM? My informal analysis shows the numbers are very low meaning there could be huge room for growth.

That is of course if you don’t ascribe to the idea that it is important for companies to help shape the dialogue about themselves online. More importantly, you don’t believe that tying social media into CRM systems can boost sales and service levels and perhaps even increase productivity.

One person who believes in the power of social CRM is Nimble founder and CEO Jon Ferrara. Around 1991 or so he told me at a dinner that his new company contact management/CRM company Goldmine has lots of potential because, “There is no Lotus in the market.” Ironically, Goldmine did in fact become a major player in the space while Lotus faded from the scene.

Last year Nimble rolled out its initial cloud-based social CRM solution and there are now 30,000 users and 3,000 of them spend almost half their day on the platform. The newly released Nimble 2.0 aims to increase the first if not both of these numbers. In Ferrara’s own words, “Nimble is an integration of social listening and engagement platform, internal collaboration with sales and marketing capabilities of traditional CRM and elegance and simplicity of contact manager rolled into one easy to use system.”

He contrasts the look of Nimble – which is similar to a Facebook page to Salesforce which he says looks like a mainframe screen. Additionally, he believes that while Hootsuite is useful it’s limited because it doesn’t allow you to drill down on specific contacts.

Successful salespeople have always known that information related to a certain prospect could help increase the chance of a sale. In other words, if you know where a potential customer went to college, that information could be helpful in relationship-building which in turn could give you the edge in a competitive sales situation. Although people like to believe they purchase based on objective facts, likeability and/or trust of a salesperson is a major factor in pulling the purchasing trigger.

And one of Nimble’s objectives is to boost relationships by enabling companies to get a better overall picture of their prospective customers.

Ferrara likens Nimble 2.0 to fishing in the social river where salespeople can find a needle in a haystack. By tying in traditional CRM data, a company can ascertain which people on social networks have also downloaded documents from the corporate website. Moreover, companies can also determine who in the social stream is interested in which products.

For a few years now I have swept all my Twitter follow emails into a special folder and I’m frankly amazed at the quality of the follows on this network. Not only do I find numerous related companies I never heard of and are worthy of coverage. Often these follows turn into prospects and sometimes become new customers of TMC.

Tying these follows into a CRM system makes infinite sense if for no other reason than to justify the spend companies are making on social media.

In other words if you are to put aside the passion that Jon and I share for the future of commerce being closely aligned with social CRM, then at least you should be onboard with using an integrated Social CRM tool to evaluate the ROI of the effort your company is putting into social networks.

In using the platform I am happy to report it has proper hooks into a number of social networks including Google+. A number of other social aggregation platforms don’t yet connect to Google+ for some reason. Moreover, although I am a Nimble dabbler, not a frequent user, I find its daily email digest of job changes from my social networks very useful.

Jon also feels his company’s integrated solution is better suited to the world of social-CRM than a CRM system with social bolted on. While this is a logical statement, I wouldn’t count out Oracle, Salesforce or any other CRM vendors as social integration should be straightforward. Sure, some will always do it better and Nimble is a pioneer but that doesn’t mean the CRM world won’t be watching like a hawk and emulating like a cheetah.

Nimble is free for standalone personal users and business and multi-users can sign up for $15 per user per month. At that price it is certainly worth trying.

ITEXPO East 2012 Miami Schedule

2012-01-25T20:49:34Z

One of the most frequent question I get regarding TMC’s ITEXPO which takes place next week in Miami – is with all that is going on – how do you make a decision as to which parts of the show to attend. Truth be told I believe the event and its collocated conferences and educational sessions rivals just about any other tech show in terms of education.

Some of the hot topics to be discussed include not only general communications and technology but 4G wireless, mobility, Asterisk, open source, business video, the channel, cloud computing and communications, HTML5, Mobile Latin America communications, M2M, technology patents, the MSP market, Super WiFi/white spaces and much more.

The following is a list of important details you will need to help navigate ITEXPO East 2012 Miami. I warn you – this is a subset of what is happening. To keep you posted on not only these items but other important events at the show please follow @itexpo on Twitter and turn on mobile notifications – it is pretty simple – just follow the menu below. Twitter also allows you to turn off notifications at certain hours in its settings tab.

Also, please download the show directory/guide (PDF) and read through it before you get there to get the most out of the event.

ITEXPO East 2012

January 31 - February 3, 2012

Miami Beach Convention Center

If you are staying at the Loews in Miami or a hotel nearby the best route to walk is down 16^th street making a right on Washington after a block. Most concierge personnel will tell you to walk down Collins which is longer and if the sun is strong may be a bit uncomfortable.

View Larger Map

Registration counters are located in the Hall B Lobby. This is the section of the convention center on Washington Blvd., closest to the show hotels.

When you arrive, proceed to the registration counter to receive your badge. You will need a photo ID.

SHOW HOURS

Tuesday, January 31

Registration: 7:30am – 5:00pm
Workshops begin at 9:00am
POST POTS Special Sessions: 2:00pm
Avaya Tech on Tap: 5:00pm

Wednesday, February 1

Registration: 7:00am – 7:00pm
Workshops/Sessions begin at 9:00am
Free Keynotes: 12:45pm; 3:30pm
Exhibits Open: 4:30-7:30pm
Free Networking Reception: 5:30-7:30 on expo floor - Sponsored by Broadvox.

Thursday, February 2

Registration: 7:00am – 4:00pm
Workshops/Sessions begin at 9:00am
Free Keynotes: 9:00-11:00am
Exhibits Open: 11:00am – 4:00pm
Networking Reception: 4:00pm
StartupCamp5, featuring keynote by Terry Matthews: 4:45pm
ITEXPO Party on South Beach - Mangos Tropical Cafe: 9:00pm

Friday, February 3

Registration: 7:30am – 2:00pm
Workshops/Sessions begin at 9:00am
Exhibits Open: 11:00am – 2:00pm
New Mustang Giveaway at 1:45pm – Must Be Present to Win

Updated schedule. Visit the show site for additional details

Keynotes and Special Sessions Schedule: (Open to all attendees)

Tuesday, January 31:

2:00 pm: Special Panel Session:

Post POTS Net Neutrality & the Cloud: From POTS to PANS

============================================================

Rumors of the death of POTS are not exaggerated. To build a new model for the future we have to determine the bottlenecks. Come discuss the impact of the cloud and the migration from end to end to any to any services; about supporting access and quality of service; about Net Neutrality and Privacy.

5:00: Avaya Tech on Tap Workshop and Networking Reception

=========================================================

Kick off ITEXPO East with a special pre-conference seminar and evening networking event, hosted by the Avaya DevConnect Program. Join Avaya and our special keynote speaker Judith Hurwitz, co-author of "Cloud Computing for Dummies", as we tackle some of the most challenging technology transitions facing IT organizations today, namely cloud computing and collaboration enablement.

KEYNOTES Wednesday, February 1:

12:45pm: Michael Rouleau, tw telecom
3:30pm: Paget Alves, Sprint
4:30pm: Timothy Wagner, Samsung Telecommunications America

KEYNOTES Thursday, February 2:

9:00am: Rick Whitt, Google
9:30am: Chris Swearingen, Senseaware, Powered by FedEx
10:00am: Dirk Gates, Xirrus
10:30pm: Julius Knapp, FCC
4:45pm: Sir Terry Matthews, Wesley Clover

WORKSHOPS at ITEXPO – Open to All Attendees

Cloud Business Development Workshop

Tuesday, January 31 - 9:00am

Larry Dillon and Michael Curry will co-host the first ever pre-show workshops focused towards new business development techniques for resellers, developers and cloud-based service providers.

Asterisk 123 Training

Tuesday, January 31 - 9:00am

Come get a well-rounded and informative introduction to the Asterisk Project. All are Welcome! Whether you are managing a team deploying an Asterisk implementation, evaluating potential replacements for a legacy telephony solution that's on its last leg, or just a general Asterisk "newbie" excited to learn what Asterisk is capable of, then this talk has something to offer you.

Sangoma Vega Training

Tuesday, January 31 - 9:00am

Sangoma Technologies will host a free full day hands-on training session teaching you how to configure and troubleshoot the Vega series gateways for use with IP-PBX and SIP trunking.

Blackberry HTML5 Hackathon

Tuesday, January 31 - 9:00am

Join us at the upcoming HTML5 Hackathon to discover how BlackBerry WebWorks takes HTML5 beyond the browser. We'll show you the power and simplicity of the new BlackBerry browser

Ingate’s SIP Trunking Workshop

Wednesday, February 1 – Friday, February 3

Attendees can earn a SIP Trunking Professional Certificate by participating in the Professional Development Program on February 1. Attendees can also earn a Unified Communications Professional Certificate on February 2.

Telecom Reseller Week Presentation Theatre

Wednesday, February 1 – Friday, February 3

Telecom Reseller Week provides you with a forum for you to learn about cutting edge new solutions you can represent, to meet with many new potential partners, and to study proven sales techniques to help improve your team's performance.

MPLS University

Tuesday, February 2 - 1:30pm

MPLS University is a forum for IT and business professionals to bring their questions about network reliability, always-on connectivity, voice, regulatory requirements, security, and cost control. Join us for two FREE live MPLS University sessions at ITEXPO to learn more about utilizing cloud-based solutions

StartupCamp5: Comms Edition

Tuesday, February 2 - 4:00pm

Featuring keynote address by Sir Terry Matthews

The incredibly popular StartupCamp networking event returns. This unique forum is for early-stage entrepreneurs to pitch their communications products or services to a discriminating audience of potential investors, media, bloggers and industry influencers. The event's fast-paced, "ready, set, pitch" format brings early-stage communications companies, developers, industry leaders and investors together to network and validate entrepreneurial pitches in real time.

4:00: StartupCamp5 Free Networking Reception

4:45: Introduction/Event Kickoff by Larry Lisser

5:00: Keynote Presentation by World-Renowned Entrepreneur Sir Terry Matthews

5:45: Startup Presentations and Judging

7:00: Networking and Voting

QUESTIONS?

Contact Frank Coppola (203.852.6800 x 131)

Thank you sponsors

Diamond Sponsor:

Digium

Platinum Sponsors:

AudioCodes
Sonus Networks
Sansay
Dialogic
Interactive Intelligence
Netxusa

Gold Sponsors:

abp
Adtran
Broadvox
MegaPath
USAN
888VoIP
Panasonic
snom
tw telecom
Sangoma

I really look forward to seeing you all at the show – it will be fantastic.

Update: My marketing team has a fancier version of this document which they send in emails after you register. It has web links and may be easier on the eyes.

Bain Capital, Romney, Vulture Investing and 15% Tax Rates

2012-01-23T17:35:14Z

A shout out to investors everywhere

I haven’t seen this level of funding in the tech space in years – I would go so far as to say the amount of funding is the greatest I’ve seen since 2000. I don’t believe we are exceeding 2000 levels but it is encouraging to see that investors believe that tech makes a solid investment.

Before I begin with which markets have gotten money, let me make a shout out to the investors in the world. You see, me, everyone at TMC and in fact most of the tech world owes its existence to investors who risk their capital against all odds to make a profit. It isn’t unusual for these investors to hit it big in one out of ten deals – meaning 90% of their investment is washed down the drain.

And because of their decision to be investors we get companies like Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Pandora and Google which have made the world a better place.

We are in an unusual time in American history – one in which a potential presidential candidate is under attack for being a successful investor. Mitt Romney was the head of Bain Capital and not only is his firm being accused of being involved in vulture capitalism – he is under fire for laying off workers and also for paying a tax rate of 15%.

There aren’t too many people coming to the defense of Governor Romney regarding the above so this is what people need to know.

Investors are good – regardless of whether they invest in distressed companies and have the moniker “vulture” attached to them. If a company is distressed it is usually because it needs money and is potentially facing bankruptcy. When an investor comes in it is because they believe they can either turn the company around and/or they believe the sum of the parts is worth more than the current market value of the company.

So when the “vulture capitalist” comes in and a company subsequently shuts down – it is no worse a fate than would have faced the company had the investor not put up money to help out in the first place. In the best case scenario the company gets the funds it needs and can do an acquisition, invest in a new factory or whatever it must do to become profitable again.

It is worth pointing out the big payoff for an investor – whether it is a vulture, strategic or any other type is when the company they invest in becomes more profitable than when they first invested in it.

This gets us to Bain Capital laying people off. The primary reason for a company to be in business is to generate increased profit over time. If the business goes south (and remember we are dealing with distressed companies to begin with) or there is an opportunity to close a plant and reduce expense, the business has to do what it needs to do to ensure shareholders make money on their investments. Moreover, closing a plant could be in-part the reason the rest of the company can keep their jobs.

Remember, investment funds only get to stay open if they make a profit and most of their investments will fail. Only a single digit percentage will make it.

This gets us to the capital gains and dividend rate of 15%. I have heard countless people tell me this is unfair but my argument is if these investors are responsible for so much hiring and innovation and most of their investments are lost then why would we want to take this money out of the private sector where it generally gets reinvested into more new companies?

After all – the companies which are invested in rent office space – use contractors, hire people by the hundreds of thousands who in-turn pay all sorts of taxes – they buy massive amounts of equipment which not only helps companies like HP and Dell but they also pay sales tax on these purchases.

And if they happen to sell products or services overseas they bring foreign money into the US which protects our currency from going into a free fall due to our excessive dollar printing and overspending as a nation.

The issue many people have is the low tax rate of 15% compared to what they make. A salesperson or executive for example may end up making less income but paying a higher tax rate of 25-35%. To that I respond –why should anyone pay a higher tax rate than 15% – not why should the investor pay a higher percentage.

In other words while I agree the system may not seem “fair” on the face of it – the solution is to bring the tax rate down on all people not punish the people who fuel this economy.

Just today for example three tech companies put out news of funding and it isn’t even noon yet. Polar Mobile received $6M for its HTML5-based publishing platform, Joyent received $85M in the cloud computing space and TRUSTe received $15M in the online privacy space.

That is over $100M in funding and I would wager virtually all of it comes from money which was taxed at 15%. Moreover, on dividend income which is also taxed at 15% - it is money which is already taxed at the corporate tax rate which is as high as 25%. Meaning the money which comes to investors such as those at Bain Capital has been taxed 40% in total!

I understand the divisive politics of jealousy is effective but if you make your living in any way off the tech ecosystem – you should stop and think for a moment about how lucky you are that this industry is thriving while much of the economy is struggling. Moreover, if you use social networking, tablets, Internet or satellite radio or virtually any cloud service, you can thank private equity and investors.

And this doesn’t take into account the investment in pharma or other markets which produces life-saving drugs and the myriad other industries which receive funding, allowing them to hire and produce great products and services we all enjoy.

Some additional thoughts:

Self-promotional message: Next week TMC the company where I am CEO will be hosting ITEXPO in Miami and there will be great emphasis on cloud computing and communications as well as HTML5. You want to be there.

If I had to choose a Republican candidate I am not 100% sold on Romney – I lean towards Gingrich. Neither is conservative enough for me – but I believe Newt more effectively explains the benefits of conservatism for society as a whole.

Whoever wins – this will be a brutal class-warfare oriented campaign by the left and I truly hope the rhetoric doesn’t distract the nation from coming together and competing with China, India and other countries. After all when you lose jobs in this country it isn’t the fault of the rich guy in the corner office it is because the business environment in other parts of the world is better than the US.

The solutions to the problems the US faces are not going after the people who make the smart investment decisions for their employees and investors but instead to ensure we have a competitive workforce which is flexible and educated with minimal regulations allowing us to make the case to corporations about why jobs need to come back to the US.

How Megaupload Takedown Hurts Cloud Computing

2012-01-22T19:07:24Z

How self-destructive US policies are hurting hiring and industry
One of the biggest concerns regarding the passage of SOPA is that entire domain names could be blocked by federal authorities due to a single offending blog or web page. In this past week, major websites such as Wikipedia and Google engaged in an education campaign in order to have consumers put pressure on politicians who eventually reversed course on their support of the bill.

On a side note – as a conservative – the fact that a Republican, Representative Lamar Smith was the biggest proponent of this bill is horrifying. He should be thrown out of office by his constituents at the first possible chance.

Moreover, any politician who ever supported the bill should suffer the same fate.

But what is even scarier than theoretical web takedowns is actual ones and this week we saw Megaupload removed from the web because it allegedly engaged in activities which promoted pirating copyrighted material. Now if you aren’t a user of the site – and I never have been to my knowledge, you may be led to believe the US government was in its rights to take down a site designed solely to break the law.

But the challenge here is there are many users who used Megaupload for legitimate uses like sharing and storing files. These people are effectively cut off from their assets – and were given no notice this would happen.

Here are tweets from some angry users:

@taenina: #Megaupload was closed by the FBI… Was I the only one who had it for work files? Just get me my files back!!!

@Pattysplayhouse: They shut down #Megaupload. I had backup files of all my personal images up there on that site

@Roatandude: So I had a whole bunch of personal stuff stored in #Megaupload and now its gone. WTF!!! #StopSOPA

@Nicole8angel: Megaupload is one thing that helps me send big files to my group mates when we’re making projects… Bring it back...

Think about this – Megaupload was being used as cloud storage and was shut down because the site engaged in practices the US government deemed to be illegal. Isn’t this the exact same argument outlined above as it relates to SOPA? Yes.

So what we have determined is the government doesn’t need SOPA to shut down websites it deems to be acting in a way which does not respect copyright holders.

But this is where it gets interesting. The insatiable move to the cloud has led to consumers and businesses storing more and more of their files on services from a variety of companies. Amazon’s S3 for example stores terabytes of information and it is a safe bet some of the data in its cloud is not legal – meaning pirated. So should Amazon S3 be shut down? And how about Amazon.com? After all it’s the same company. Likewise for other companies who allow illegal data to be shared. Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Dropbox, YouSendIt, you name it.

Obviously the issue is the degree of infringing data and moreover, what is the purpose of the service? For example, Napster was set up for no other reason but to share illegal music. Pretty clear cut and dry. But Megaupload has many legitimate users as well – so how does a determination get made in terms of the guilt, innocence and due process of such sites and services?

Well a good solution would be courts – but an argument can be made by the MPA that they take too long.

So we are left with what is really a grey area – it is unclear which sites will be future targets in-part because targets are determined by what users determine they want to share. So if millions of users tomorrow decide they want to use a specific cloud vendor for the purpose of setting up a new age Napster to share music and movies, the site could be targeted and taken down – along with the legitimate files stored on the service.

Explained another way, we are in legal cloud limbo. And it is worth stating firmly that the federal government is casting a shadow over cloud-computing – one of the hottest sectors of tech, receiving perhaps the most funding and doing the most hiring. I cannot think of anything more self-destructive for a society looking for economic growth to be doing.

11 Things Yahoo Must Do Now That Yang Has Stepped Down

2012-01-18T15:14:56Z

As reported on TMCnet yesterday, Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo has stepped down from the board to pursue other interests. We have a great deal to thank Yang for – as the first company to categorize the web and build out many free services, society has benefit greatly from what Yahoo has more or less given away for free. That is the positive – the negative is the company has eroded top management and investor confidence for many years. Not to mention the botched Microsoft acquisition some years back at a valuation more than double what the company is worth now. To summarize the challenges at Yahoo, its a giant sloth competing against gazelles like Google and Facebook.

The massive amount of innovation and competitive instincts shown by Google’s founders as well as Mark Zuckerberg is a start contrast to Yang who never struck me as a competitive businessperson. Now that he is gone altogether and new CEO Scott Thompson is at the helm, here are some of the areas of focus the company should be dealing with in no particular order.

Marketing

Yahoo has tremendous depth – a dizzying array of services, apps and products – in many cases, the press and people outside Yahoo working on the projects aren’t aware of them. The first step in turning around a company is improving communications and making your services more sticky. Obviously this can only be accomplished if users know all there is to explore and benefit from.

Social

Yahoo has increased its ties with Facebook – in fact I would say it has done a great job in this regard – but the company needs to reach out to the Twitter community as well – and how about Instagram – this up and coming mobile, social photo-sharing network would be a strong asset in a world where there is value associated with owning the social network.

Mobile

Continuing on the social theme and merging it with mobile is Yahoo’s IntoNow app which allows an iPhone or iPad to become an interactive, social TV terminal. You can login with Facebook and the program will listen to your TV, decipher what channel and program you are watching and share the information with your friends. From there you can communicate with your friends about the program.

This is an awesome app which needs to be promoted more widely. Moreover, Yahoo has to do more leading-edge work like this. Then it may be up to the press to start covering it more.

Cloud

Google and Amazon are generating real revenue from the cloud and there is an opportunity for SMB and enterprise dollars if the company can find new and creative ways to leverage its data center. There are many small businesses for example that use Yahoo Mail… What about new hosted apps to extend mail into CRM, accounting and other areas? This can be done with partners if need be.

Music

According to Alexa, music.yahoo.com gets 1.42% of the site’s traffic which isn’t bad – but what about a mobile app for music like Pandora? Does it make sense to pick up this company, Spotify or Slacke? How about a closer working relationship? Seems there is lots of opportunity here for growth.

Movies

This is a tougher one – the company’s movie site gets 2.3% of its total traffic – it could be better perhaps with more custom content. To that end the company announced they joined forces with Playtone and Reliance Entertainment to bring Tom Hanks' multi-dimensional animated series "Electric City" to Yahoo! in 2012.

This could be a big break for the company and with YouTube launching original content channels by the dozen this move must be done to remain somewhat competitive.

Be cool

Apple, Google and Twitter are cool – Yahoo to me seems very corporate. The company has to loosen up its culture and its way of doing business. One of its biggest challenges is the hipsters and even younger generations aren’t using email which means Yahoo has to find new ways of remaining relevant with this crowd. If the image of the company isn’t right to begin with, any new services will have a lower take-up rate.

Expand

Google comes out with so many new services so quickly it makes the head spin. Yahoo is much slower in this area and needs to speed up. They need to take a group of top engineers and set them free to discover the next big thing(s).

Partner

I’ve mentioned a few partnership opportunities above but there needs to be many more. Partnering is an inexpensive way to grow your business while helping another company grow theirs.

Behavioral Targeting

Why isn’t Yahoo the best at returning ROI for advertisers? It should be as it has just so much information about its users. Years back I wrote about how Google’s purchase of DoubleClick would put the search leader in a better position in terms of analytics but I never imagined Yahoo wouldn’t be a powerhouse in this area. The company needs to improve and quickly.

Election

Yahoo needs election tie-ins and as many as possible to stay relevant. By this I mean it needs to be involved in building the community of questions and answers for many of the televised debates. YouTube is doing this as is parent company Google. Likewise for Twitter and others – Yahoo has to do better.

These are just some things Yahoo can do to improve its performance and perhaps more importantly relevance. In Internet time, Yahoo at over 15 is a dinosaur. The question is with Yang’s departure and a new CEO can the company reinvent itself as an embryo or will it be bogged down in-part due to a stodgy corporate culture which took years to build and may take even longer to dismantle.

Alianza Lands Huge Clearwire Cloud Communications Deal

2011-12-20T22:10:26Z

Fasten your seat-belts - this is getting interesting... cloud-communications provider Alianza just landed a four-year hosted software licensing agreement with Clearwire. Alianza's end-to-end voice platform combines all the back-office platform management, product management, and end-user support functions into a single web-based administrative user interface and this deal marks perhaps one of the largest if not largest cloud-based VoIP deal I am aware of. Company President and CEO Brian Beutler certainly thinks this is the largest deal in the industry... He told me so on a call this past Friday evening.

This is huge news for Alianza and the cloud in general.

TMC's Carrie Schmelkin has more.

I've invited Brian and his company to be part of Cloud Communications Expo Jan 31-Feb 3, 2012 at the Miami Convention Center as part of ITEXPO. I hope to catch up with him there as well.

Dotcom All Over Again?

2011-12-05T22:48:22Z

This time domain names = IP addresses and dotcom = cloud

The idea of cloud is not new – think mainfraimes, ADP for payroll and the ASP market of over a decade ago. This time though the investors are behind the move and it seems potentially for good. I say “potentially” because I launched a magazine to educate the market on the cloud revolution called Communications ASP in 2001 and it was a mega-success for a few issues until almost all our advertisers told us at once that their investors no longer allowed them to use the term ASP.

Poof. And just like that the market disappeared – bankrupting the majority of these players except for a few like Salesforce.com who scraped by.

This weekend the news broke that cloud-based SuccessFactors was purchased at a 50% premium to their Friday closing price by SAP and Oracle was rumored to have been in the bidding as well.

We have a slow economy – a record 46 million Americans on stamps, Europe in major trouble and a boom in the values of cloud companies. It is incredible actually. Irrational exuberance? I’m not sure – could be but it does seem that every company needs some sort of cloud play and purchasing is faster than building. Anyone remember the term “Internet time?” Should we rename it “cloud time?” Perhaps.

Another thing that set off my déjà vu meter was a report which Tom Keating sent over to me via email… IP addresses are now being sold for a record $12 a pop. The reason is the move to IPV6 and the lack of IPV4 addresses. Still, this isn’t much of a premium over the $11.25 paid in March of this year by Microsoft per 666,624 address they purchased but any dollar amount is more than you would have paid a year or so ago so that’s real appreciation.

Back in the day – 1999 when everyone in your tech company – including the people in the cafeteria and janitorial were paper millionaires we expected anything in the Internet space to have insane valuations and domain names were selling for many millions apiece. Well it seems those days may be returning. In fact, remember last June when I wrote that domain name values were increasing in price again? It seems in some ways the glory days are back but let’s hope this time for the sake of investors, employees and customers that we put more of a focus on earnings, profit and long-term business sustainability.

Speaking of the good old days – TMC will be debuting Cloud Computing Magazine next year. Here are the details and a subscription form. Let’s just hope investors will still be OK with the term “cloud” after issue # 3.

Why a Cloud Computing Magazine? Why Now?

2011-11-04T20:40:48Z

I am very excited to be going to the Cloud Expo next week in Silicon Valley - it is always a great show and I have lots of video interviews set up. I have been to the last three east coast shows in New York - this is the first time I am going to the west coast for the event. Fuat Kircaali and his team have done a tremendous job over the years.

The following article is the first draft of my column in a new TMC publication which is timely and should be of interest to virtually everyone in tech. The website mentioned below should be working soon - it is propagating through DNS servers as I post. Hope you like it.

Updated 12/20/2011

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Why a Cloud Computing Magazine? Why Now?

Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most important trends in tech along with virtualization, 4G/mobility and HTML5. Interestingly, they all grow in a symbiotic fashion. For example, the more powerful mobile devices become and the richer the media they can provide to users and the greater the growth of cloud-based services which feed these devices with information. Likewise, the greater the growth of cloud-based solutions, the greater the need for virtualized systems which help deploy compute resources more effectively.

At this point it is obvious the cloud is becoming a crucial part of the future of computing and to paraphrase Marc Benioff the Chairman & CEO of Salesforce, even if many companies could afford the software alternative to cloud-based solutions, they may not be able to afford the hardware and operating system licenses that are associated with a customer premise software install.

We all know the benefits of cloud from an OPEX versus CAPEX perspective but what is sometimes lost in the move to cloud is companies are also benefitting by being able to focus more on their core competency. Are we in the business of building data centers is a question more and more CXO titles are asking themselves and except for a handful of markets, the answer is no. And by focusing on business instead of managing server farms and software licenses, companies are able to be more nimble – scaling their compute and bandwidth needs up and down as their business needs dictate.

The reason for a magazine on the topic is clear – there should be a crucial digest disseminating news, analysis and research which decision-makers need to stay up to date on cloud trends, happenings and benefits. TMC’s Cloud Computing Magazine™ is that resource. (callout)

Of course as more and more people turn to the web for news, you can expect our companion site cc-mag.com to be a great place to turn for instant information on cloud computing and moreover, the vast majority of you will receive the magazine as an emailed PDF allowing you to read it on your tablets, smartphones and PC screens.

Some of the future challenges and opportunities for cloud computing are availability/uptime, data sharing across clouds, standards, security, compliance, analytics and management. Expect TMC’s Cloud Computing Magazine™ to cover all these topics and everything else IT decision-makers need to more effectively do their jobs.

I started my career in a mailroom and used the power of programming which I learned on a Commodore 64 in the early eighties to outsource my high school mailroom job and become a computer programmer and UNIX system administrator in the process. My obsession with computing really started with video games but it was the productivity associated with business computing which opened my eyes to the wonders of technology and how it can transform an organization.

Cloud is the next step in the computing transformation and has opened my eyes once again. Sure it’s not a new concept – it is really just a return in a way to centralized computing which was popular on mainframes and early UNIX systems. The difference though is we now have a single term today which encapsulates a massive computing shift where applications which used to have to live on servers in a local data center are being encapsulated through virtualization and multitenancy and relocated to remote, potentially redundant data centers. The power of cloud is not just about what I have written so far, it has to do with its simplicity for the laymen to understand. Moreover the buzz around the term and popularized success stories directly translate into cloud-based solutions being more easily approved by CFOs.

In the eighties and nineties, many companies sold customer contact management software but once the term CRM became agreed upon in the mid-nineties, the industry exploded with growth. Terms matter and trends matter – expect Cloud Computing Magazine to be the one resource critical to cloud-computing purchasing decisions. We hope you subscribe today.

At Metaswitch Forum 2011

2011-10-03T20:37:19Z

I presented at two sessions today at Metaswitch Forum 2011 and both focused on wireline trends in the market. The general theme of this conference so far has to do with how carriers can compete in a world which is rapidly becoming mobile and social. Metaswitch for it's part has been busy improving it's platforms allowing carriers to take back control of business relationships with their customers.

Interesting takeaways from this session is a discussion being led by Anusha 'Ash' Nirmalananthan of Metaswitch where she is dissecting some social network activities in Facebook and Skype and exposing areas of exploitation for carriers.

She says, innovation and differentiation are crucial for carriers going forward. "Carriers need something unique" she exclaimed.

She further shared a customer survey that said they want VoIP carriers to provide them with apps on their smartphones.

Location:Audrie St,Las Vegas,United States

Why Blocked AT&T, T-Mobile USA Deal is Good for Growth

2011-08-31T17:47:13Z

Critics might say, in the history of M&A, it is difficult to recall one instance where more jobs were created as a result of two companies coming together. Yet this is the argument AT&T has been making for just less than three months after the merger announcement with AT&T and T-Mobile USA was announced. In part the argument was reinforced by the company's commitment to bring remote call center jobs back to the states.

Moreover, AT&T’s claim that this merger would be good for consumers is an interesting one as critics might say it is fairly easy to argue either side.

For example, if the merger were to go through, AT&T would have tremendous incentive to upgrade the speed of its network because as of the last year it has started to charge for bandwidth – eliminating unlimited plans. In other words, the company would be motivated to speed up its network to ensure it could charge customers more per unit of time they use network services.

In the alternate scenario, improving network speed would be something done to stay competitive and passing on the higher costs of network improvements to consumers could only be done if other carriers decided to do the same thing. In the situation where free market competition is in play, companies will have to be more innovative, trying new tactics to get a leg up on the other wireless carriers. And in this scenario, consumers win.

Last month I asked if this merger would slow wireless innovation and one of the points I made was that T-Mobile USA and Sprint have been more aggressive working with smaller equipment providers who rely on deals with smaller carriers to keep their investors interested and motivated to pony up more cash in the hopes of eventually landing a big global carrier at some later date.

It seems the FTC agrees as they filed a civil suit this morning to block the deal citing that T-Mobile has been a disruptive force in the market. The complaint further cites a T-Mobile document in which the wireless carrier explains it has been responsible for a number of significant "firsts" in the U.S. mobile wireless industry, including the first handset using the Android operating system, Blackberry wireless email, the Sidekick, national Wi-Fi "hotspot" access, and a variety of unlimited service plans. T-Mobile was also the first company to roll out a nationwide high-speed data network based on advanced HSPA+ (High-Speed Packet Access) technology. The complaint states that by January 2011, an AT&T employee was observing that "[T-Mobile] was first to have HSPA+ devices in their portfolio...we added them in reaction to potential loss of speed claims."

The size of the breakup fee is $3B in cash and potential a billion dollars or more in spectrum so we can expect AT&T to fight this decision tooth and nail. It is worth pointing out that Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile USA believes the breakup fee is worth $6B.

But one has to wonder what AT&T knew and what inside information they had to decide to go ahead with this deal. After all, there are few if any business leaders who believe the Obama administration and by default the federal government is pro-business. Steve Wynn is perhaps one of the most vocal and worth listening to. And if there is even a hint that consumers would be hurt in this transaction, wouldn’t it obviously be denied?

So what possessed AT&T to go forward on this deal if they didn’t have amazingly good inside information?

And the timing – it just couldn’t be worse – AT&T CEO Randal Stephenson was on CNBC this morning touting how good the merger would be for the US economy – pledging in part to bring 5,000 wireless call center jobs back to the US if the deal was approved.

Then a few hours later the DOJ makes the announcement – almost the moment after the CNBC segment was complete.

If there is an interesting twist in this news it’s that the Communications Workers of America Union is very supportive of the merger as according to CNBC, AT&T is a union shop while T-Mobile USA is not. They even said publicly that the DOJ lawsuit is the wrong decision for jobs. As the Obama administration is extremely pro-union, having the CWA on-board could have been a big reason that AT&T felt confident they could get this deal through.

So I can’t help but to conclude that DOJ used common sense here and although AT&T’s arguments as to why this merger would be good for jobs and consumers is likely true for the short-term, over years, having one less wireless carrier would mean less innovation not just from the perspective of competitive pressure in the marketplace but from the resulting death of a slew of wireless equipment and service providers who rely on smaller carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile to get their start as telecom equipment providers.

It is worth reminding my readers that I have pointed out often in the last few months that call center jobs in India are becoming a problem because Indians don't look favorably at the work anymore and moreover, the competition for labor is so great that wage inflation and turnover rates are skyrocketing. The videos below give you a further taste of what I mean - so we might expect AT&T Mobility and other call center jobs to end up back in the states regardless of the results of this attempted acquisition.

TMC & Zenith Infotech Cloud Computing Seminar Series Launched

2011-08-30T18:57:09Z

Cloud computing is perhaps the hottest and most important computing trend which hand-in-hand with the mobility markets are two of the shining stars of tech. The cost savings and myriad other benefits of migrating apps to the cloud has allowed companies to become more productive and efficient while reducing CAPEX. Startups too have embraced the cloud, allowing them and their investors to rapidly determine customer demand for new software and services without the traditional need to build a data center and outfit it with state-of-the art servers and software. This has allowed more startups per dollar to be produced, allowing many companies who would not have had a shot in the old days to not only get funded but flourish quickly as the cloud also helps companies grow quickly – because they don’t need to depend on their physical data center space to fuel their growth.

Next year TMC will have spent four decades educating the various markets it serves and one of my favorite educational vehicles has to be face-to-face seminars and conferences. This is why I am so excited to announce TMC has partnered with Zenith Infotech to launch a 25-city seminar tour titled "It's Your Cloud" bringing the most important and latest information about cloud computing to you.

Topics to be discussed include virtualization, Active Directory, messaging systems and more. Any and every person who has an interest in technology should be at these half-day events which will be in virtually all major cities from New York, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, NJ, Orlando, Philadelphia, San Diego, Tampa, Washington DC, San Diego, San Jose, Tampa, Miami, Boston, Orlando and more.

As a special bonus you will hear a keynote address from tech futurist Nelson Ruest, Director Resolutions Enterprises LTD. The seminars will take place over the next five months and we hope to see you at one or more of them.

You can learn more and register here.

Electronic Health Records Only as Strong as Weakest Link

2011-08-24T20:36:57Z

It is becoming commonplace to find that organizations of virtually all sizes are getting hacked and their data compromised. Sony and the CIA are just some of the latest we have heard of.

Let's be clear, these are some very high-profile sites and if they are hackable, it may be safe to say virtually all sites and are potentially vulnerable. Of course we know security is a journey and not a destination meaning companies need to install the latest patches and updates and monitor their code carefully for potential buffer overrun and related attacks.

One of the most recent areas of digitization is electronic health records and candidate and President Obama has discussed the potential benefits of going digital in the past. Then again, it isn't like the average consumer who has used LPs, tapes and MP3s doesn't understand that the digital format is the best for multiple reasons.

So when politicians finally read the Obamacare bill and start implementing it - we can bet there will be a heavy, heavy focus on electronic health records (EHR).

But wait, the EHR of 300,000 Californians have been floating around the Internet according to a story on TMCnet's HealthTechZone. So even though EHR is relatively new - it has already been proven to be less than secure.

Of course it seems inevitable - we don't use paper for much these days and to think that everything else but our health records will live in a computer is illogical over the long-run.

But we have to ask ourselves, if most of the country doesn't trust the government to do much but they will be the ones managing our healthcare information - will it be properly protected. There isn't much more love for insurance companies to be sure and anyone who thinks they will be any more secure stewards of our confidential information is certainly fooling themselves as well.

The answer? Well, I don't have one beyond instituting much stiffer global penalties for hackers but I expect IBM and other huge consulting companies to start making serious money in the future focusing on securing crucial records from prying eyes.