Social Analytics and Relationship Management!

There is a good amount of traction on Social Analytics from Marketing departments. CMO Teams are experimenting their discretionary spending in listening platforms, sentiment analysis, campaign impact measurement, amplification rates and competitive intelligence metrics.

The mainstream investment is yet to kick-in in Enterprise IT space. In my view, Social Analytics is all about Qualitative intelligence whereas traditional analytics is all about Quantitative intelligence.

Where do you typically need Qualitative intelligence?  When I say Qualitative intelligence is all about something that is not measurable, not explicit, lies as tacit knowledge in people's minds, often not expressed in numbers, generally not quantified, subjective. By means of subjective, the intelligence also largely depends on cultural bias as well.

Now, Where do you seek and use such intelligence?. We all know Quantitative intelligence is something that everybody seeks in structured financial investments/reviews or operational improvements. But, Where do we use Qualitative intelligence?

Hitherto, We seek Qualitative intelligence from people. We talk to people our inner circle and our networks to figure out what is subjective opinion on certain individuals/institutions/products and services and then We decide.

But, with arrival of social networks, its much easier to capture such information from Social Analytics tools.

In my view, Qualitative intelligence is lot more applicable in relationships whereas the numerical intelligence is applicable in transactions. What do we mean by relationships and transactions?

I remember reading the following saying few years go...

"You focus on transactions. Relationships will not grow.

 You focus on Relationships. Transactions will grow naturally".

Unfortunately, with intense competition and scarcity for time, everything is a transaction now. The responses are almost instantaneous and the relationships are volatile, as choices are too many.

Then, When do we really have relationships?. I think Relationships are a must-have in long-term associations...or a series of short-term engagements. CMO team approaches relationships from the second perspective – series of short-term engagements.

In that context, I see social analytics are lot more relevant in relationship-centric environments such as

- Measuring customer feedback in services' firms Offshore Delivery centers

  (I recently gave a survey to my car dealer on their recent car service.  They asked me to force fit my rating into only three categories.    For example, the service executive asked "Do you want to us rate as Excellent, Good, Bad?"    I said "Average". I explained the reasons for the same opinion.   Unfortunately, they couldn't complete their survey, because their system expects only one of the three above mentioned ratings!.  That's crazy!. I could still force fit my survey rating. But, it would mean the auto dealer will lose the value of my feedback. That's exactly the Qualitative intelligence I am referring to).

- Measuring Employee Performance for Leadership roles (Largely deals with perceptions)

- Measuring the perception of say, a real estate firm, based on its past deliveries/customer services (again perception driven), before somebody makes a huge investment

In all these scenarios, stakes are high and data/information is scarce while decision making.

In all these examples, I am not saying Quantitative metrics doesn't matter. But, Qualitative information weighs a lot more, which is often overlooked.  In fact, Qualitative intelligence with corresponding quantitative metrics, it could be a winner metric all the way!

In some of the scenarios, Social analytics is also used to compute the impact in short-term transactions such as measuring the impact of time-bound marketing campaigns (internal/external).

Its very valid, but using social analytics in relationship management will create greater impact than transactional scenarios.

Today, Social Analytics is all about Marketing because that's where it gets funded and largely public data focused such as Twitter, Facebook, etc.  This is required. But, let's not get skewed that public social is the only social.  

There is good amount of social activity happens in Intranets (beyond Twitter, Facebook, etc.). There is good amount of social activity happens in non-digital world as well (Phone, In-person meetings, word-of-mouth opinions)

If we depend and derive our opinions based only on pure-play social analytics that monitors public facing sites,  We should also be aware of their boundaries. And there are tons of opportunities to employ social analytics in lots of business and social scenarios.

Insights from Social Analytics should ultimately help us to improve our relationship management actions!.

 

Social Engineering in Action - by LinkedIn!

Am not a big fan of Social Networking sites. Have ranted about my perspectives on famous social networking sites in my earlier posts. But, a recent initiative by LinkedIn really got my attention. Would like to share my observations on this initiative and some of the key take aways in this post.

In all my previous companies, the HR department typically chases employees every six months to update their individual skill sets and certifications. This information is used by Resource Managers to identify the best people required for the upcoming business opportunity, be it consulting or application development or system integration. Obviously the HR initiative falls flat consistenly with meagre employee engagement resulting in incomplete / inaccurate data.

Then IT department changes the look and feel of those competency management tools and releases a simplified new version to appeal to its employees. Assuming employees would embrace the new system, there would be new set of internal marketing / evangelization undertaken within the company. Guess What?. The pursuit falls flat again with discouraging results!.

The reason for failure is simple. Employees don't see value in return for submitting their individual skill sets/expertise/certifications.  There are no organizational incentives that compliments the IT systems to encourage the employees to submit their individual information.

LinkedIn has solved this very issue in capturing the skills data for individuals who have registered their profile with LinkedIn.  This blog post is all about the idea LinkedIn has applied in achieving decent results.

If you have been a observer of LinkedIn in the last few years, you must have seen the company morphing itself from a Professional Networking solutions provider to a Social Job Portal. Nothing wrong with that!. Its the business model that LinkedIn has adopted. Its definitely better than a business model that is completely dependent on pure-play advertising!.

Guided by its business model, LinkedIn was pestering me to provide details on my skills sets for quite sometime.  It sent me email reminders. It tried to influence me that providing details would help me to land great opportunities!.  Of course, I didn't budge!. and LinkedIn also gave up after few weeks.

Now during last week, I received about 10 emails from LinkedIn stating that one of my ex-colleague has endorsed my skills in several areas.  I received one email per skill set that is endorsed by my connection. What an Idea?

LinkedIn has cleverly applied the idea of nudging my connections to endorse my skill sets. And it really worked!.  Have also started receiving periodic emails from LinkedIn stating various conenctions of mine endorsing me in different skill areas.   Whenever a connection of mine visits my profile, LinkedIn asks the question to them if they would like to endorse me in a variety of skills areas.  If they are interested, they could endorse it and the number of endorsements appear in my profile.

 A very complex challenge that enterprises have been struggling to tackle for a long time has been solved by a very simple social idea.

The key observations that I derive out of this idea are:

- Your social connections may know little more than what you think they know about you. Of course, some of these could be mere perceptions or inaccurate information.   But, Please note having some data with less accuracy is always better than having no data at all (like the HR department example)

- By having connections endorsing your skills, LinkedIn has pulled the right levers in the interest of its business model.    It had an insight that connections would have some knowledge about an individual's skill sets.

  It also had an insight that connections would be willing to help the individual by doing the simple act of endorsements.   By helping the individual, the connections also help LinkedIn to gather more data that would be useful in its job / candidate matching.

- The unintended side-effect is that the individual may feel happy about the endorsements and may also like the connections who did the endorsement.    This could nudge the individual to renew their connections and reopen the communications with the people who have endorsed.

- Above all, the intiative helps to generate 'more' data that is decent and useful in a business and social context.   It helps to keep the system 'live' and 'fluid'.

[Would also like to add another example here by LinkedIn itself. In initial years,when somebody registers their profile with the site, it would ask certain set of information under pre-defined categories. And it would also let the user know how much percent the profile is complete with information. (e.g. 80% or 70%).  Letting the user know and indicating the completeness would potentially nudge the user to provide more information and make it complete. Pls note here the user is influenced to provide information in favor of LinkedIn's business. But the individual perceives its towards the benefits of his own interests.  Initially when I created the profile, I made it 100% complete. Now if I look at my profile again, it says 90% complete. I was wondering why?. Because, LinkedIn wants my resume also to be uploaded to make it 100%. Isn't that a great idea?. If I am a novice user, I would certainly upload my resume and make it complete. Unfortunately for LinkedIn, am not!. :-)]

This is a classic case of Social Engineering, where you are subtly nudged to do certain things in favor of an individual or a business, without major effort.

Am sure We are going to see lot more examples not just from LinkedIn but from other leading companies in near future!.

Hollywood: Inspiration for designing Next Generation Workstyle?

 

Recently, IBM bought a company called Kenexa.

 

SAP bought successFactors.
Oracle acquired eTaleo.
and now its IBM's turn to pickup a HR technology company.

The reason this news caught my attention is that Kenexa is not only a technology company that has HR solutions, but also provides HR services such as Hiring/HR consulting, etc. Now, that's interesting. Initially, I was thinking its a innovative idea from IBM perspective. But later, I had to change my mind and hence this blog post. Read on to find out why!

IBM has acquired not just a software company but a services/operations company as well, in HR space. Essentially, its a vertical integration of IT services business, where the IT services organization delivers the complete business operations enabled by technology.

Now, lets take a small detour...Go thru the following list and try to figure out what is common

Apple
Prosumers (Integration of Producers/Consumers)
Sellsumers (Consumers who sell their data/insights to corporations)
Tasksumers (Consumers who make money by doing small tasks for other consumers)
Single point of contact
Single window clearance

All these are examples of vertical integration where couple of responsiblities are fused to single individual or  organizational entity. The fact is single window clearance in Govt context is so attractive not because its accountable and delivers results, but because coordinating with multiple entities within the Govt is time consuming!.

We live in highly-networked, Globalized World. We live in times where we have the unique opportunity to network with
virtually anyone in the World, thanks to advanced communication technologies.  Still, the irony is We believe vertically integrated business models succeed!.

Vertically integrated business models indicates the degree to which a firm owns its supply chain, either upstream or downstream. Irrespective of the outcome - products/services - of those vertically integrated business models, people perceive  those models are highly reliable, accountable and products are superior and world-class.  It could be true!.

 

But, the question is - with the far reaching capability of social/professional networking, are we losing the opportunities to create world-class products/services by leveraging vertically disintegrated business models?. Unlike integrated business models, in a disintegrated model, the scope gets partitioned across several organizations that have their own specializations that gets finally integrated to deliver a product/service.

 

The more we disintegrate the responsibilities, the more we co-ordinate & co-create with diversified stakeholders in a network. The more we disintegrate and unify the capabilities in the network, more innovative the end products/services would become.  But, does it also mean 'more chances of failure, more failure points?'. Possibly Yes.

 

Do we have examples?. Of course - What do you think 'Open Source Movements' are?.
There is no integration, There is no reward/incentive, There is no measurement criteria, There is no single point of contacts, There is no raci chart, Still the movement created a tremendous amount of impact in IT industry. The essence of open source development is all about 'coordination'.

Unfortunately, We couldn't replicate open source models within enterprises. Will we do the same mistake in Enterprise Social Networking?. We need to wait and watch.

In the industry, we constantly oscillate between integration and disintegration or centralization/decentralization. The question is not to ask - Either this or that, but to ask when to apply what?

But, as we have access to abundant data/computing power/professional knowledge across the globe, following a vertically integrated model would be a lost opportunity where we give the entire control to a single entity!.

What is another example of Vertically disintegrated model?. - Very simple - Hollywood industry.
Making a movie involves involving professionals from multiple business entities and they all work together to create a successful movie. The entire team gets dismantled once the movie is complete.  Remember, with a variety of stakeholders from different entities, Intellectual property is still managed and results get delivered. The essence is 'Coordination' across entities, not just individuals.

While the traditional project management works under the premises of 'integrating' resources to deliver reliable services, breakthrough innovation can only happen by 'willingly coordinating' individuals/entities.

Soon, some pockets of our workplace could get transformed to the way the Hollywood works!.
 

Unpredictable Analytics!

This is my 200th post! :-)

Thanks to all my readers who continued to frequent my blog for all these years and encouraged and shared similar perspectives!

When it comes to digital media, We have the problem of abundance. That's the reason we have so called 'Big Data' solutions. 

Abundance everywhere - be it mobile devices, its features, social media, its humungous lifestream data, and other typical web 2.0 channels such as blogs, wikis, etc. With abundance, people end up having too many choices and often challenged to seek clarity when trying to identify the best thing that suits them. 

To top it all, We have new generation professions called 'Data Scientists' and 'Social / Big Data Analytic' solutions which promise to give some of the unique insights that were never available before - be it competitive intelligence, customer sentiment, persona analysis.

Again, Analytics opens up a floodgate of opportunities which again businesses have to figure out which one is the best to take advantage of.  Regarding Analytics, I came across a very interesting perspective shared by HP-EDS fellow Charlie Bess - who says that analytics should enable us to contemplate on questions that were never asked before, rather than answers/insights. In my view, its a profound statement!.

He goes on to explain - Don't analyze the transactional data of your own customers, instead ask why the similar customers in the market are NOT buying your products/services?. What are their preferences which you are not addressing?. 

The moment you identify a question that was never asked before, you have a innovation opportunity. Today's marketplace has tons of answers seeking questions - be it all new technologies/solutions/devices/services.

But, Identifying the question is not so easy! :-). It's a integrative competency that encompasses many aspects including business acumen, customer insights, technology trends and product/service leadership.

Would like to give another example...I am choosy when it comes to shopping. I dont mind visiting multiple shops/malls when it comes to shopping a product/service that meets my quality requirements.

The Retail store can do lot more data mining and analytics when it comes to analyzing the purchasing pattern of its customer base. But, What happens when an existing customer has a preference, visits the store, doesn't make a purchase, but walks out simply. That's a missed opportunity. I have done that couple of times. Am sure, many shoppers do that especially when they have a clear expectation of what they want to buy.

Often, these opportunities go unnoticed because the customer doesn't make a digital interaction with the business/store. Hence, it goes unnoticed and becomes a missed opportunity!.

If you've observed, in small pharmaceutical shops, if the same scenario had to occur, the pharmacist prompty takes a note of the unavailable prescription and even offers to deliver when the stock arrives in a day or two. But, it doesn't happen in all kinds of retail. 

The question to be asked here - Is there any loyal customer who visits our store and doesn't make a purchase?. If yes, why?

I firmly believe the future service innovations deeply depend on mining the innovative questions. And that requires a unique capability!.

In my previous organization, as a Technology/Architecture practice lead, I was also running Innovation charter for one of the lines of business. In those days, when we run out of good ideas from conventional Innovation workshops, my Director used to challenge me saying - 'The recipe for innovation doesn't lie in analyzing tech trends and coming with cool ideas. The recipe lies in identifying unique business problem statements that are yet to be solved'. Very True!.

In summary, as my other favorite blogger Vinnie says - The idea is not to find out just 'Why'. Creativity is all about asking 'Why Not'.

IT Architecture Meltdown - Agile is NOT the answer!

In the last post, We discussed about the diminishing role of IT Architecture in Enterprise IT.

The meltdown was mainly attributed to couple of reasons:

- Implementation/Development of Business systems are complete or consumed as a service

 (The business systems include system of records, system of transactions and even systems of engagement)

- IT costs are constantly scrutinized for business value. In understaffed and underfunded IT projects, Architecture would be the last thing that gets focused.

- Continuous Disruption in Technology space opening up a huge but uncertain canvas for experimentation and business innovation.   Experimentation / situational solutions calls for spontaneous processes.

If traditional IT architecture practices dont match up to the needs of today's requirements, what is the alternative?. Would 'Agile' help?

We have been discussing about the role of 'Agile Architectures' or 'Agile Methodologies' for coming up with solutions quickly. But, they have their own caveates namely.

- Agile methods are suited for building systems where there is uncertainity in underlying technology or uncertainity in business requirements. However, In today's times, the customers are lot more smarter. They are pragmatic, incremental and absolutely clear about their next 2-3 steps.

- Agile Architectures / Agile modeling concepts largely thrive on 'emergent architecture' patterns. The philosophy here is that 'Architecture' evolves as the business requirements evolve. Again, an expensive assumption to make in these times.

- We have also heard a lot more on 'Agile' Systems where the systems would be flexible enough to be responsive to changing business needs. This means the systems could have been over-architected to accomodate multiple unforeseen scenarious in advance. Yet another expensive approach.
- Agile methods also require the product owner to spend quite a lot of time with engineering team to continuously review and refactor the requirements and the software. All this was acceptable in a development life cycle where you have several sprints/several interim releases. Today, fully functional releases are expected in weeks not in months. So, Product Owner would rather like to spend his time with his own customers/end users than with engineering teams.

In my view, the traditional IT architecture as we know it, is dead!

If 'Agile' is not the answer, What is the next best alternative?. In my view, the next best alternative doesn't exist yet in proper shape and form and it needs to be invented/designed.

Would like to highlight some of the critical considerations for the next best alternative:

1. The traditional architecture practice focused on 'business requirements', 'static structures' and 'runtime behaviors'.    If traditional architecture is closer to 'software engineering' and 'management systems', new age architecture is expected to be closer to 'end users'. (not the sponsors)

  

2. The past decade focused on building 'systems/solutions', while today's expectation is build 'meaningful experiences'.    The 'ends' are far more important than 'means'. It doesn't mean that processes can be ignored, but they are taken for granted.   Unfortunately, We focused too much of our efforts on 'processes' in the past decade that we are poorly prepared to build 'experiences' in coming years.

The olden days architect thrived on his own technical strengths and political ability in internal organizational ecosystem. This is no longer adequate.  To be a successful architect today, it requires a lot more understanding on markets, trends, business, technology and more importantly end users and their social context.

An IT architect from past decade can morph into a new form to address these new requirements. But, We may not call him as 'Architect' anymore. Probably, a 'Service Director' or 'Experience Director'. The Director would be responsible for the overall creative outcome of the project.  I wish to see the traditional Project Manager role to morph into the role of something like a 'Production Manager' who manages all non-technical/non-creative aspects but critical for delivery such as logistics, resourcing, finances, stakeholder management etc.

In order to effectively leverage IT architecture in Enterprise IT, it is absolutely necessary to categorize/tier the systems in the order of importance as we discussed in the last post. For example, System of Records and Transactions need a lot more stable IT architecture than systems of engagement and systems that deliver experiences.

In summary, We still need traditional architecture methods and practices, but to 'maintain' our business-critical/supporting systems 'not' to address the new age business requirements.  What we need today are the frameworks, architectural processes and project management methods that would enable us to deliver 'amazing IT services & experiences spontaneously'.

Would like to stress upon some of the significant aspects of the above statement:

- We are not going to build systems and solutions - but services. Services by themselves are co-created by consumer and producer, short-living experiences.

- We live in times of plenty. To differentiate truly valuable services, they have to deliver 'amazing' experiences/results. Mere functionality is not enough.

- We need to deliver services 'spontaneously'. We should be able to deliver expected/instinctive results almost instantly.

    

Are we prepared?

IT Architecture Meltdown - Are we prepared?

If you are an IT Architect, Am sure you must have come across a similar situation in your career..

Few years ago, in my previous company, I used to lead Architecture practice. During those days, One of the senior program managers came to me asked - 'Bala - As you know, We are developing this application for an internal need, do you think we need to go all nine yards in Architecture?. Is it even worth it?. Can we do it in some scripting langauges like cold fusion? Would that suffice?'. My answer was a resounding 'Yes'.

In most of the unstructured scenarios where a new custom application gets developed, it may be worthwile to watch out for following scenarios:

- The so called new app may be for a non-critical internal business need
- The app may be an interim arrangement till a suitable solution becomes available in the company / market.
  For example, most of these custom apps may get replaced by a huge ERP or a cloud service or COTS package in near future
- The underlying business process itself may be temporal / short-living in nature
- The app can be an 'early-bird' experiment in a specific technology - for example, a mobile application for a specific platform.

In all these cases, the app is not expected to be built for durability. I would like to stress the word 'durability'.
Durability calls for high-commitment, high reliability, huge upfront costs/investments, plan for future support (example - versioning). In short, durability means 'built to last'.

In the absence of durability, we are referring to a low-touch, low-commitment application. You may say, it may of of low-quality.  And Customers are perfectly fine with that, purely because of the fact that those apps are not expected to be durable.

Only when you build a highly durable software, you will need the 'Architecture'. Having a robust architecture will address all the non-functional requirements of the software.

In my view, we are at the 'tertiary' phase of Enterprise IT applications, where the core apps that form the foundation & custom apps that form the differentiation were all built in the last few decades. We have now entered in to the decade of discontinuities where architecture multiplicity has become the norm, not the exception. Business is flooded with abundant of choices in disruptive technologies with their own architectural choices - be it mobility, social media, cloud and analytics.

And We live in highly uncertain times where predicting the business climate for next few months itself has become a huge challenge. For the first time in many years, Indian IT services company Infosys has suspended its quarterly revenue guidance, owing to uncertainities across its global customers across many verticals.  In those conditions, businesses are forced to take tactical, incremental and sometimes non-durable/experimental steps to sustain and grow the business. Of course, not to mention with least upfront costs. In another story, most of the IT outsourcing companies are holding around hundreds of thousands of people on Bench - without utilization - due to decline in demand.

In times where just-enough functional outcomes are valued lot more than durable qualities, Architecture would be underutilized. If done in force, unvalued by the business.

And that is exactly happening in the industry right now - be it Enterprise IT or outsourcing / IT services industry.
For Architects who have not come to terms with this reality, finding themselves misplaced and misunderstood. And businesses end up underutilizing Architecture in places where its not appropriate.

The whole reason that triggered me to write this post was an article on the traditional civil architecture called - Architecture Meltdown - that talks about the fate of building architects post recession.  For hundreds of years, art and architecture usedt to be the symbolic representations of a city's prosperity.

Ok, If this is the issue for the Architecture meltdown in Enterprise IT, what is the solution?

Is the role of Architect dead and not required any more?. If not, what are the options in leveraging the best of Architecture and Architects in these uncertain times?

Have some suggestions...Stay tuned for my next post.

Marketing Blue Ocean Strategies!

Am sure most of us must have come across the bestseller business strategy book Blue Ocean Strategy. Blue Ocean Strategy is all about achieving high growth and profits in business by creating uncontested market space and making competition irrelevant.  This is essentially accomplished by coming up with innovative products/services. In contrast, Red Ocean is all about competing head-on in traditional marketspace with conventional or rapidly commoditizing products/services. And in the book, you find several examples of companies that have demonstrated the benefits of Blue Ocean Strategy.

If you observe the examples, you will find the likes of Apple, Nintendo, Air Asia and others. Of course, being big and daring to take risky market adventures is no small feat!  Some of these companies also have the advantage of an established brand by having competed in red ocean products/services. Hence, when they enter into blue ocean (such as introducing something like iPod), they demand attention regardless of the merit in the new product.

The question is - How can small fishes enter and succeed in Blue Ocean?. For one, startups & small companies may not have enough clout/marketing budget. Second, by virtue of being innovative, none would be able to understand & appreciate the new product without enough marketing. So, How could they be successful in marketing their unique products/services?

As Jack Trout says there is no objective reality when it comes to marketing. There are only perceptions. Marketing when undertaken purely on product merits regardless of perceptions is sure to fail.

However, When it comes to startups/smaller companies, there are no market perceptions on the company.  People neither love it nor hate it, because they may not know enough yet. That's not a nice situation to be in!.

When it comes to Online Marketing, We are still in light bulb stage!.  Would like to quote couple of examples here.

1. The social analytics tools such as PeerIndex, Klout and Twitalyzer report the most influential people on the Internet. They are highly reputed, established and successful in the offline world as well. They report people like Deepak Chopra, President Obama as top most influential people. Come on!. They are and would continue to be influential and successful
even without Twitters/Social Networks and other online tools.  We dont need analytics tools to report these findings.

2. Digital Marketing thrives on keywords, search and celebrities. If you dont have a presence in any of these, you are lost.
   For example, if some one comes up with a new vocabulary, new word (example - web 2.0), it wouldn't be successful and top the listings unless its quoted by an online celebrity or gains enough traffic.   Recently, I was introduced to a new word called - Filter Bubble - by Venky, who is a regular reader of my blog.   Though Filter Bubble is a brand new word, Search engines will get you plenty of results because it was coined by a reputed online activitist (who has klout) and there was a TED presentation on the same.   Keyword based marketing takes a mechanistic approach and limits the possibilities of innovating / discovering and amplifying new concepts!.

3. All Internet marketing efforts are based on quantitative analysis of content such as page ranks, klout computation, number of hits, retweets, etc.  Keywords and traffic hits rank humans?. Excuse me! :-) They are not based on qualitiative assessment or the merit of the content.   Unless this happens, We wouldn't be able to unleash the potential of the Internet and its Innovation diversity.   Using Online tools, you would only be able to find what you would like to know. How will you discover something radical which you dont know, but that exist online?

   May be, the next generation online tools could leverage semantic technologies assisted by Human intelligence to qualify the content and reach the required audience.

I was trying to understand how Facebook and Twitter became popular despite being new & small in the market. Facebook became popular because it was launched and grown in universities till it gained a significant mass. Twitter grew significantly by having celebrities signing up for the service.

But, Marketing innovative concepts/products/services pose a unique challenge given the top limitations. This applies to marketing products/services born out of Blue Ocean Strategies as well, especially from Startups/smaller companies.
So, What is the next best alternative?. The best way to amplify an innovative product/service is to first create a 'local density' - a small group of people who would turn as advocates, salesmen, tribes who communicate and support each other in the community around the new offering. And they would need to connect with 'Connectors' who can bridge them to larger communities. (like Facebook did) as mentioned by the 'Tipping Point'.

Apart from online efforts, TED conferences were widely recognized as platforms for spreading ideas. Some of the TED ideas are worth listening to and has the potential to influence the audience. However, there is another dispute here that talks about what influences the TED conference sessions themselves (including celebrity sessions) and their usefulness in recent times!.

Facebook's Mobile Conundrums!

Read an interesting article in Economic Times of India yesterday on Facebook IPO.

Two interesting facts caught my attention:

1. The Headline itself was quite staggering - Wall Street Struggling to find Facebook's intrinsic value
2. Facebook has warned its investors in IPO prospectus that its business is facing challenges in mobile

There is a general perception that Facebook is not doing great in mobile.Wanted to really understand in detail the issues Facebook has been facing in the mobile space. Here is the deep dive:

1. Facebook's major revenue as of today comes from Advertising.
   Direct Advertising that is supposed to be much more effective and cost efficient compared to search  advertising. The advertising has been much more effective in Web/Desktop systems, as there is enough real estate in the screen to encourage the day-to-day social networking and the advertisement snippets side-by-side. The moment this paradigm comes to Mobile, there is a scarcity of screen space and either one of the aspects need to compromised (either social networking experience or advertisements). Apparantly, business users/marketers wouldn't want to compromise on advertisements. This leads to a challenging situation for Facebook to manage advertisements in mobile devices.

2. Unlike conventional Web/Desktop architectures, Mobile brings lots of choices in Technology/Architectural choices.   Efforts to standardize the multiplicity will go in vain. On the other side, producing multiple versions of the same application for variety of platforms will lead to fragmentation of user experience.  I have used Facebook app in my earlier HTC Wildfire and its HTC's own app called FriendStream. Similarly, there is one published by Microsoft for Windows Phone Facebook app. 

One aspect of standardization could be use of HTML5 and allowing users to access Facebook via Phone's microbrowser environments. Unfortunately, HTML5 is not so mature and not widely supported in variety of devices as of today.  

Facebook's app marketplace equivalent environment - App Center - could potentially have to compete with Android Marketplace or Apple's App Store from Developer ecosystem perspective. (not necessarily from consumers perspective)

Third and final technical option - using voice/sms mediums for reaching mobile users - require Facebook to form new relationships with Telecom Carriers. Facebook has been doing something innovative along with carriers in couple of countries, but not across the world. Again, here the challenge is to establish relationships with multitude of carriers worldwide and innovating consistently across the board.

3. Location based advertising. This has been discussed for quite sometime now.
   However, there are caveats for this solution as well - Revealing a person's location information may threaten his privacy/safety. Second, Some of the startups have started to offer 'Virtual Checkin' Options as well - which means user can mention that he is in a specific place, without even physically being there.   That brings a whole new set of opportunities/solutions. And Location specific 'push' for marketing messages/offers may drain your phone's battery as well, with the use of GPS.

My general reading in mobile space is that I am yet to come across a company that has 'Mobile First' Strategy. What I mean by 'Moble First' Strategy is not treat mobile as simply an extension of existing Web Sites, but reimagining the product/service exclusively for mobile channel.

Most of the companies just dilute their existing websites and make it accessible to mobile devices. I dont think that is going to be enough, considering the fact that such an approach would underutilize the mobile device's capabilities.

So, the companies need to 'rethink' fundamentally their product/service and monetization options. In this case, Am starting to think if Facebook's real value propositon of social networking would be still relevant in mobile space?. If yes, Would it have the same user experience as Web/Desktop?. Why can't it be fundamentally different?. Would mobile devices fundamentally change the way people network? I am thinking 'Yes. It would be radically different'.

As I read somewhere, Facebook has grownup and its now facing the market to demonstrate its real business value. It would be interesting to see how it overcomes the looming challenges in moble. Not to forget the fact that this phenomenon is not just applicable to Facebook alone. All the companies that had a successful story in Web would need to reimagine for Mobile.

Why? - Users are migrating from Desktops to Mobile devices to access the Internet. Is it a Post-PC era?. Not necessarily. Its primarily for web content consumption.

War for Talent or War for Jobs?

 

Few weeks ago, I was in US and had the opportunity to read the local newspapers, specifically one of the columns authored by reputed columnist & nobel prize (equivalent) winner - Paul Krugman - for his contributions in economics. The column is about unemployment. It projected the serious concerns around unemployment among young Americans. He quotes the unemployment rate among American youth is around 16.5 percent. In spain, unemployment among workers under 25 is more than 50 percent. This is the scenario for people who are just graduating out of college and expecting jobs.

If this is the case for fresh graduates, on experienced professionals front, I am reading HP planning to layoff  close to 30000 people - 10 times the staff strength of Facebook.

On other front, there is a growing war for talent among much hyped, overvalued Tech Startups in Silicon Valley. The hype is so much that people are even speculating Tech Bubble 2.0.

In India, in IT service sector, the average tenure of employee is thinning year after year and its a growing challenge to deliver results with scarce resources. (Of course, you have access to plenty of resources. But here I mean ondemand access to quality resources who can make meaningful contributions)

In non-IT sector, especially in semiskilled/unskilled sectors, I hear from businesses that its lot more difficult to attract and retain loyal employees with their organizations.

Two diagnally opposite situations - Which is true?.

The key question that I would like to discuss in this post is - What is the role of Technology in the overall scenario of Employment Generation?

Let's accept - Technology does take away jobs!. Period!. The question is - How do we create new ones?

Would like to quote an interesting example that one of my ex-colleagues shared. When my ex-colleague tried to convince the management of deploying a technology that would enable an industrial automation, the management rightfully agreed with the solution, but didn't eventually deploy because doing so would take away the jobs of certain semiskilled/unskilled workers. In India, it could be considered socially irresponsible, though rightful from business perspective. Its upto the competitiveness of the respective industry in which the company operates, to decide whether to deploy the technology or not.

In recent times, people in India, especially in Bangalore would agree that as more and more technology workers get their jobs, the demand for semiskilled/unskilled workers is only increasing. Yes, the demand for domestic services, labor-intensive - people centric services have shot up.  There is enough demand and increase in their wages/prices.

Hence, Technology actually takes away jobs in certain segments and creates demand in other segments. In this case, it creates demand for tech-savvy workers and unskilled workers.

The question is - Is this sustainable?. Companies like HP are getting disrupted by Facebook/Cloud business models. The moment tech workers get crashed, it would have a cascading effect in their supporting unskilled worker base as well.

With Technology advancements like Robotics and Highly competitive Intelligence accessible to everyday computing systems, a lot more preparation is required to retain/grow jobs. This article by MIT - winning the Race with Ever-Smarter Machines - articulates the various ways where the humans and ever powerful computing systems can co-exist peacefully and still create unique value propositions for the customer. The author states, even if technology progress froze today, we would have enough things to do.

As mentioned in this eBook, the key message is "key to winning the race is not compete against machines but to compete with machines".

And its going to be far more critical in coming years. Here is an another interesting study that reinforces  this point of view. Workforce Planning and Job Creation is going to be fulcrum of everthing that we do, if we want to create sustainable institutions!

Social Engineering: Next Big Threat or Opportunity?

This topic has been pending for long...

I was quite fascinated with this topic and been doing some research and collecting some background information for the past few weeks. If you search for this word - Social Engineering, you will find tons of definitions that are associated with IT security.

The essence of the definition is that how much ever robust technical infrastructure you may have to protect to your IT systems/infrastructure, the weakest link in the entire security infrastructure is the Human being. Social Engineering exploits the good or vulnerable aspects of human beings so that they are persuaded to reveal the security information which they are not supposed to. As per techtarget, It is described as non-technical intrusion that relies heavily on human interaction and often involves tricking other people to break normal security procedures. Social Engineering is also called human hacking - exploiting their emotions such as fear, obligation - to break into security infrastructure.

These social engineering tactics could be embedded & designed in line with pop-up advertisements, email attachments and persuade you to do things that are malicious to the underlying system, often without the true awareness/knowledge of the persuasion.

For example, an intruder without an access card can request a benevolent/kind enough employee to open the door for him in the office. In this case, the intruder would know that specific employee is kind enough, but not assertive enough to ask the reason for opening the door. Social engineering in the context of Security is a big topic by itself.

As techtarget states, social engineering will remain the biggest threat to any security system, as our cultures become more dependent on information. I was trying to explore the reach of social engineering beyond Security. If it can be used for hacking and malicious purposes, why not use the same for benevolent needs of an organization? That's the starting point.

The other extreme I was thinking about is - How to use Social Engineering for inculcating constructive/positive new values into the system?. How can we leverage the Social Engineering aspects and weave them into the workplace/social fabric for making positive changes into their lives? By saying so, I mean - Engineering changes, Engineering the Society (need not be at large, but to a small group of people), Engineer the values of the system explicitly? How can these new concepts enable people to accomplish their personal/organizational goals?

By thinking too far in this topic, i felt it need not be difficult.

All our social life is getting digitized...- Our friends, Our interactions with friends, Our interactions with brands, Our aspirations, Our emails/messages, comments/feedbacks, purchases, interests, career choices - everything is digitized.

As old saying goes - Someone can derive a person's personality/behavior if they know enough about his/her friends.

If this is true, in digital world, it’s going to be lot more easier, because you don't just have information to his/her friends alone, but whole lot of other information. There are even tools available that could derive emotions embedded in your status updates/messages...

In fact, there was a recent research that confirms that none can hide from social network. Even if one prefers to stay away from Facebook, his/her profile can be predicted if any of his/her friends has activity in Facebook/social networks.

For example, if you are following a particular blog for quite a few years, there are chances that you are being socially engineered :-) The theme could be anything - Innovation in Outsourcing, Design thinking, Technology infusion in new business models, etc.. You will start to believe with lot of conviction & agree with those blog themes.

When you are thrown up 'Top news items of today'- there are remote chances that you are being engineered as well. What is the guarantee that they are indeed 'top' news items of today?. The news headlines and their priorities can be ordered to tweak your thinking and value systems.

And we are going to see more and more of that, in this information intensive digital society.

We are already witnessing - TV/Traditional print media has been doing doing this for ages. Of late, it does with ease because it has lots of insights on the society. If you sign-up for anti-corruption movement involuntarily, there are chances that you might have been engineered! Please note we are not discussing whether the cause is good or bad here.

All we are discussing is that social engineering tactics can be used to persuade or even inculcate new values in the society! And to be precise, it can be done in organizational context as well.

In my view, even agile movement with its 4 bullets Manifesto is a engineering process. People buy those values and stories against waterfall and become the new ambassadors to signup others.For example, Lean Manufacturing insists culture change first. In other words, it is social engineering.

The good news is, we have tools that enable Social Engineering implementations. For example, Gamification can define new means of success, rewards and collaboration. Charlie Bess of EDS advocates that we may see new DLLs/Libraries for common scenarios of gamification across industries. Good idea!

And this morning, I was reading Peter's blog from Australia and it highlights a very important point - Culture is going to be only competitive differentiator for next few years. Everything else can be replicated – be it processes, assets, IP, capabilities, etc. (The challenge is how do organizations create a sustainable culture when the average employee tenure is thinning dramatically)

Social Engineering holds an enormous potential in shaping up an organization's successful culture.

I know its a long post..:-) Hope it was interesting!

Moneyball Movie, Sabermetrics & Enterprise Analytics!

Thought of naming this post as 'Relation between the Game of Who Wants to be a Millionaire & Enterprise Software'. Will talk about it in little while..

Brad Pitt starred Moneyball movie released in India this week. The movie is based on a True story,
where the General Manager of a undervalued baseball team takes a counter-intuitive approach to make the team a winner!

What is the unconventional approach  that the GM takes?. The traditional process for selection of players depends on the players' physical abilities and mental toughness. Whereas, Billy Beane (General Manager) takes a statistical approach for choosing players.

He chooses players on a statistic called on-base plus slugging. Billy's theory was based on the works of a sabermetrician - Bill James. Sabermetrics is the mathematical and statistical analysis of baseball records. Billy Beane's philosophy of winning base ball matches is supported by a mathematical formula that is backed by statistics. Once he has a philosophy and a winning formula, Billy chooses players who would be conductive to the formula!. By this approach, Billy turns a underfunded, overlooked baseball team to overachievers.

The key takeway from this story is all about identifying and tracking only critical metrics, striving for lean and efficient operations and optimizing resource management.  These principles can be applied to any enterprise scenario that needs to be improved.  As this story implies, that one small insight in the business can secure competitive advantage and revolutionalize the industry.

Interestingly, Billy Beane joined the board of Software-as-a-Service provider - Netsuite. One can see NetSuite logo in quite a few places in the actual movie (Moneyball) as well. Netsuite CEO Nelson articulates here a list of management rules inspired by Billy Beane!.

Coming to another Game, Who wants to be a Millionaire...The regional versions of this Game debutes in India this week!.

Later, Moneyball has become a new metaphor for metrics based management in many other verticals such as investment management in capital markets, TV Game shows (Jeopardy/Who wants to be a millionaire), and in Enterprise Segments - Sales/Digital Marketing.

Here is another fascinating story where a PhD in computer science made tons of money in the Game show - Jeopardy - using data-mining and Clustering techniques to figure out the questions that the contenstant "needs" to know.

This also implies that the contestant doesn't need to master all facts in the world to compete!.

This strategy applies to the Game show - Who wants to be millionaire. If some one has watched the promos of the game show, the sample questions asked in them are intented to tease the audience so that they feel that they have a fighting chance to win the game.

And that's the trick!. Focusing on metrics that only matter to the Game/Business!.

Why Enterprise Architecture is facing fundamental conflict in modern organizations?

If someone attempts to count the number of articles in the web that promotes disbelief in Enterprise Architecture practice, he will be extremely successful with high score! :-)

Those of you in corporate life will be able to relate to this scenario -  if someone pronounces the word - Architecture/Strategy - the very next reaction that you could get is 'disbelief/sarcasm/lack of faith'. Of course, there are failed architects and miserable strategists!. No doubt about it!.

But, Is there any bit of merit in the practice at all?

To answer that question, someone has to take an objective view of the situation without getting biased from the past experiences or correlating to people.

I think I found the answer a couple of days ago - when reading the blog post from JP Rangaswami. For those who are unfamiliar, JP Rangaswami is the Chief Scientist of SalesForce.com. (Interesting to see the title Scientist in a Software Development Company). JP constanly writes about Social organizations, LifeStreaming/Microblogging, Open APIs/Software-as-a-Service. No wonder he promotes these concepts, being part of SFDC. But, what makes his blog interesting is that he does this promotion objectively with a mix of  culture, philosophy, irony in modern society/organizations and technology.

In one of his recent posts, he writes about Social Enterprise. One of the other topics he promotes is 'Economies of Flow' which has become my favorite topic of late. Economies of Flow is fundamentally different from 'Economies of Scale' which we are all used to. I'll park that topic for another blog post later.

Now, let's come back to Enterprise Architecture & JP's post.

In his post about social enterprise, JP writes like this:

"We have moved from being customer-centric to product- and service-centric in many contexts,
sometimes to such an extent that we forget altogether about the customer.
Think about what’s happening in education, no longer about the student or about learning;
about what’s happening in healthcare, no longer about the patient or about being healthy;
about what’s happening in government, no longer about the citizen or about her satisfaction."

That's fundamentally the point.

In modern organizations that are run by cost accounting principles & measured by individual performance, people are largely incentivized to become successful on their own / on their own department.  They are not designed to work collaboratively by their incentive systems. And the performance measurements drive behaviors.

I remember, Goldratt (Author of the book 'Goal') saying 'You tell me how do you measure. I'll tell you How would I perform?".

The approach to modern management systems are fragmented and compartmentalized (because its easier to manage smaller units) which is in contrast to Systemtic Thinking.

Whereas, Architecture is all about 'System Thinking' (Thinking about the 'whole' not just the 'parts') and taking an 'Integrated approach' to problem solving. And in the name of realistic approach, if an Architecture takes a short-cut driven by individualistic forces / silo thinking, then its not Architecture.

If an Architecture, specifically Enterprise Architecture, has to be successful or to become truly effective in an organization, it means that it will have larger implications in the way organizations collaborate.  That's a structural change!. And we all know, Structural changes are hard to accomplish!.  And eventually, EA efforts will turn futile. And We all end up blaming Architecture failure!.

As JP points out, in modern society, we focus on diseases (that is a reactive approach to problem solving. And we are focusing on the 'part' not the 'whole') and not on the Patient (the 'whole', the 'system') and his healthiness ('Proactive' approach)

A change in thinking will be the beginning to see the real change in practice.

And JP summarizes like this:

"There’s a renaissance needed, to a time when it was about the student, the patient, the citizen. And about the customer".

Real Estate, Gold & Enterprise IT investments!

Sounds like a Bollywood film title?. Well, it was not intentional.

Wanted to enlist the corporate IT trends for 2012 based on social-economic trends that we see in the market. Irrespective of the industry, the larger global  trends have started to influence us quite a lot in the last few years. And I believe its going to remain the new normal in coming years as well.

From socio-economic trends perspective, What do we see out in the World?. What is so abundant that can influence our thoughts/behaviors? To name a few:

1. Geo-Political Risks
2. Economic Uncertainity
3. Indecisiveness
4. Neuro-Diversity of Global Population. Suddently, you see a surge of talent across the world, enabled by Technology.
5. Plenty of free Information
6. Cash (Yes. Contrary to the common belief, due to indecisiveness, lots of companies are sitting on huge cash)
7. Sky-rocketing Inflation
8. Increase in Consumables spending (against capital investments) - such as Mobile/Travel/Hospitality/Vacation - typically one-off expenses.
   (Live for the day, anyway nobody knows whats going to happen in the long-term attitude)

How do these factors influence our investments, in General?. What do we seek?.  The more uncertainity pervails, the more demand for certainity and stable investments. Purely because of the reason that Certainity/Stability are scarce in the new normal. Based on Economics, Anything that is scarce and in demand is likely to appreciate.  In the last few months, Gold as an investment instrument has reached record prices across the world. Real-Estate, atleast in Emerging Regions are reaching levels that were unheard of, in combination with Inflation.

What else is in more demand?. I can name a few that are in demand, but nacessarily the investment instruments per se.

1. Leadership with Vision/Courage/Decisiveness
2. Clarity, Rationale & Judgement - side-effect of Information overload
3. Capital Investments
4. Legal Infrastructure - what is right/wrong - neuro-diversity among people leads to ongoing conflicts/difficulty in consensus building
5. Entrepreneural culture
6. Top Talent that can take risks & deliver results
7. Communal harmony
8. Personal & Familiy Time

Contrary to vendor sales pitches that talk about 'Agility in Business' or 'Business Transformation', People in General seek stability/certainity when it comes to their investments. In my view, Instruments that have delivered good, guaranteed returns in the past, that can be liquidated faster, that appreciates, that is stable - will be more in demand.

Now, with this surplus and demand as the background, What kind of Technology investments that corporate IT would make in 2012 or next couple of years?

I would list the following

1. Managed VAS - mobile services
   Mobility is big time trend right now. It has influence on People's personal lives, professional lives and it would call for a significant leverage from Corporate IT. Corporate IT has so far hung up only on Mobile Applications. However, there is lot more mobility can deliver, in addition to applications.
   PwC has recently forecasted that by 2015, Mobile VAS market in India is going to grow to INR 55, 000 Crores, that is USD 10+ billions.
2. Vendors turning to Partners
   Lack of capital investments coupled with indecisivenss would delay signing contracts worth millions of dollars. If the investment is too big, the purchase cycle just gets longer and longer.
   If its too small, Companies are going to ask the vendor to sponsor for free. That's the fact!. Its happening across the value chain!. Why dont u do this for free?. This requires, the product/service vendors to figure out a new business model that would be profitable in the long-run.

3. Business/Go-to-Market Technology offerings
   Demand for Entrepreneurship and New Business Models/Products/Services will encourage a few to invest in new product initiatives.  Here, the companies would expect a credible partner who can share risks/profits together in the respective vertical. This could be Corporate IT as well.

4. Security/Legal/VPN Technologies
   Demand for security, legal technologies that would help in managing Governance, Risk and Compliance would sky rocket like never before.  The reason being that Corporates wants to be play defensive.

5. Investments in Hiring Technologies
   Rather than investing in solutions that promise improving employee engagement that is hard to achieve, companies would invest smartly in Talent Sourcing/Leveraging new technologies in this space.

6. Investments in Digital Marketing / Market Research
   Individuals/Companies would need to make themselves heard all the time using various channels that are available.    Especially, if they are serving in B2C space or services industry. Demand for innovative technology deployments in this space will continue to grow

7. Data processing Technologies delivered as Services/in Cloud
   Big Data definitely has a huge potential considering the current trend. But, Investing in Big Infrastructure may not be a good idea, atleast to start with. If someone delivers Data Services / Data Analytics from the Cloud, it's a hit!.

8. Technologies/Startups in Travel/Hospitality & Inter-personal Communication will take-off big time.
 
9. Consumer Technologies - Gaming/Mobile/Social Media/ Infotainment/NUI - again a no-brainer.
   Companies will also pilot some of these technologies in their enterprise products/services.
  
10. Technologies that can visibily save costs - Virtualization, Platform Upgrade & Private/Public Clouds

Comments/Inputs most welcome!

Klout Computing!

Yes. This is not about Cloud Computing. Post the viral adoption of social networks, analytics has picked up big time in recent months. The end result - plethora of online services available to perform analytics on social network data.

I tried Klout and Mirror Me!. Would suggest not to try those without reading further!.

While people in real world aspire for coveted titles and powerful positions, in the virtual world, the same people aspire for 'Influence'. Influence is about a person's ability to drive action in others (without power). The influential ability is called 'Clout' and Gaining this Clout is gaining lot more prominence in virtual world these days!.

A decade ago, Google tried to rank 'pages' based on their popularity. But today,the algorithms are
trying to rank the actual 'people' to assess their popularity and influence.

Klout is one such company that connects to all social network sites to evaluate your activity and come out with your Klout metric.It reports the metric in the scale of 1-100. If you are measured in the range of 70s or so, You are really really influential in the online world.

This leads to several interesting, but controversial questions:

1. Am afraid we are moving towards a celebrity culture than an inclusive one. People are literally going to compete to score and maintain a higher Klout to achieve their goals in "real" lives.

2. People who are really busy and adding value to their stakeholders may not find time to tweet/talk or network in virtual world. This doesn't mean that those people do not have enough Klout. Klout is all about Online Clout and nothing more.

3. This trend also implicitly expects that people in online world to be expressive, a post here, a tweet there, a post now, a photo later, etc. This again can not be expected from broad range of people, especially people who are conservative/introverts. This doesn't mean they do not have Clout.

4. Most of the content floating around in social networks are trivia. What is the significant business value one can get by analyzing this data?

5. No Doubt, its a competitive arsenal for Marketing. Gaining insights on current trends & influencing the influencers will greatly enhance the marketability of a product/service.  Am amazed by the capabilities of one such tool - Data Sift.  I was discussing with my ex-Colleague Paramesh that next US President election could be largely influenced by DataSift kind of tools.

6. Privacy - To compute your Klout score, the site will ask you the permission to scan your online activities even when you have not logged on. And this applies to a number of sites that you are associated with. While giving permission is a click away, revoking them may not be straightforward/easy.

7. Algorithms - What is the basis for computing the Klout? There could be various ways of measuring Clout depending on the weightage given to the nature of activities online.

8. People's persona cannot be measured only by their social network activities. Social Network is a public place where people are expected to follow certain etiquette. And People behave according to the implicit rules/norms to get associated with the larger group. However, this behavior generally arises out of their aspiration or the need for 'Personal Branding' and may not be based on what they truly are. Measuring a person's Clout purely based on their social network activity may be skewed.

9. Quantity scores more than Quality. If you have more connections in the network, you have higher chances of gaining more Clout than others.

So ,Beware of 'Klout Computing'!

Seven Billionth Baby and Corporate Dashboards!

Few days ago, Oct 31st to be precise, the news of seven billionth baby was creating lot of buzz in the media.

While I was not keen to understand the census, I was really curious to know the math behind this count. I checked with my ex-colleague and Datawarehousing/Business Intelligence Specialist Paramesh  on how this could have been possible? There is every possibility that this number could be inaccuarate because of the sheer size of the canvas. In this case, the canvas is the whole world.

We all know the practical challenges in aggregating data within a company?. And How do they do it across the globe?

Thanks to Paramesh, Today he reverted with an exact article that talks about the same challenge. It was a surprising coincidence! The article talks about - How did they count? How did they comeup with that number - 7 Billion - on that specific day?

The fact of the matter is United Nations don't know. The announcement was meant to be symbolic than to be precise. UN has confirmed there is no way it can predict at which minute of the day - 31st Oct - the 7 billionth baby was born in the world.

Howere, it is not a random number dropped just out of the hat. There is a process/method that U.N. has followed to comeup with that projection. United Nations collect country wise population data every five years and based on the system generated models, the date has been picked up at Oct 31. There is a 2% margin of error expected in the global tally, which in this case, could be huge in terms of census and the time period!

I see the corporate dashboards(BI/Reports) that take data from individual line-of-businesses within a company can take a lesson or two from this news. I have tried to list few of them:

1. There is a process and system in which the sub-system (countries) provide data to the main system (United Nations). So, Its not just about technology. We will need a process and method to coordinate the data aggregation. The systems/applications and runtime infrastructure have to implement the processes and contracts to ensure aggregation.
2. People are aware of the percentage of error and at peace with Good Enough BI. In lighter vein, What you sow is what you reap!. :-) Awareness on Data Quality and Incremental expectations are the key to successful BI implementations!
3. The focus is more on the ways in which data can be leveraged for analysis/insights and less on the precision. Often People debate about the trees that they forget to see the forests!. I have seen executive dashboards often spark controversies around numbers that the real issues get pushed to back seat!.
4. There is a model in place to predict the growth. Yes, finally BI solutions should not endup as concrete/one-off implementations. The definition of formal models that abstract the concepts in respective verticals hold the key for extensibility of the solutions.

Finally, As any BI implementation would invite disputes, Here is somebody in Asia pacific disputing that the whole seven billionth baby announcement from UN was stage managed!. :-). Again, its not just about numbers and technology! :-)

Surface takes precedence over Structure!

One of the prominent consequences of Apple iPhone phenomenon is the shift in technology buyers' focus towards Industrial Design and User Experience. This trend has caught up with every aspect of Technology - be it Consumer Technology or Enterprise Technology.

Whatsoever be the application of Technology, Consumers have started to ask - Does it activate my senses beyond just being passive and functional? - Evokes positive / Feel good emotions when you use the product, Its simple and doesn't make you think, It is asthetically designed in every little detail that I feel proud about it and talk to my social/professional circle about the technology?. Aesthatics/Meticulous design also implicitly states that the supplier has taken every effort to produce a great product.

Last but not the least, Apple also demonstrated outstanding marketing when it launched all its new generation devices. Remember, Palm has been the innovative company both in touch phones and App ecosystem long ago. Despite that fact, people queued up in hours to buy iPhones.

How does this factor influence the Architecture practice - especially Enterprise Architecture.

I should say quite a lot. It has generated a significant inequality in terms of IT investments. Earlier, the mandate to enterprise architecture was 'Show me the money'. We filled the gap with Business cases.Today, its not just 'Show me the money' but 'Show me how cool it is/Show me how it works in when it comes alive'. If a strategic initiative doesn't meet either of the criterion, its doomed for failure.

Traditionally, be it Software Architecture or Enterprise IT Architecture focused all their energies toward setting standards/specifications towards the structure of the system. The structure usually signify the skeletal framework of the system (be it a single application or the entire Enterprise IT) that defines the internal organization of the components and their evolution.

Software/Enterprise IT Architecture has it roots from Software Engineering and hence it focused more on Technology and its Quality of Service. Structure of the systems are implicit characteristics and they can be only measured by overt mechanisms like Human X-Rays.

I do want to mention the fact that these X-Ray are gaining prominence in the Software Architecture space in the last couple of years.I have personally used tools like Sonar Technical Debt that can scan the software codebase and report the health of internal structure. Result - its not just developers, the management stakeholders were able to appreciate the metrics.

The implicit structures don't manifest themselves upfront and it requires a lot of effort to understand and appreciate the Architecture. And that becomes a biggest challenge for Architecture adoption in this time-starved generation.

The challenge facing practising Enterprise Architects is - How do we make Enterprise Architecture visibly manifest its great qualities?

We have all banked upon Architecture Tools, Excels, PowerPoints Visios and Analytics/Metrics to backup. Going forward, all these tools are definitely required. However, We need a new breed of tools/techniques that takes lessons from Industrial Design and User Experience and make Enterprise Architect successful and much more productive!

The new Tools/Techniques could include - Visual Models for industry verticals, Simulations, Animated Models & Gamification. All these are interactive techniques that could help in powerful storyboarding of the strategic initiatives.

The point is - What you see on the surface makes the first impression and sometimes it takes the precedence over the internal structure of the system. The challenge is to keep the balance between both and not compromising either of the aspect. While too much of focus on surface will end up in a frothy/weak product,too much of structural focus will end up having no takers.

Have been reading 'Experience Economy' and its quite interesting though the book was written few years ago, the paradigm is more relevant in today's times than ever.

The takeaway from this book resonates with this post - Every business is turning to be an experience/show business. Hence ability to put up a good show in orchestrating various themes/elements is the key towards creating highly profitable/growing businesses.

In my view, this message applies to corporate workforce as well - Every profesison within the corporate workforce need to not only deliver but innovatively market its offerings to its stakeholders to survive and grow!

Just Enough Business Intelligence!

This post is a culmination of several aspects that I have been either reading/observing such as:

1. The book titled "The Two second advantage" - a Book by Vivek Ranadive and Kevin Maney
2. Another reputed book "Flow" - by Psychologist Mihaly. Interestingly, the Flow concepts are referred in the first book - The Two Second Advantage as well.
3. An interesting, but offensive post titled "Kill Your Datawarehouse" by Splunk. I evaluated Splunk in my previous organization and I should say its a radical departure from traditional data storage Architectures.
4. Big Data and its implications on the Enterprise.

Traditionally, DW/BI systems have been expensive, untimely and far from realizing business benefits!. In the traditional RDBMS world of DW/BI architectures, Predictive Analytics is being touted as the next big thing!. But, the reality in Enterprise IT has been the reverse. Have blogged about this state of BI in Enterprise IT few months ago.

Coupled with Big Data, Information Overload is becoming the biggest challenge being faced by Enterprises today. No amount of computational advances in the form of Cloud/Grid is going to help solve the information overload issue. It is not the question of computation, but the ability to "qualify" and "condense" the big data to formulate high-level abstract models that can be processed quickly is the key. The Two Second Advantage book calls this process as "Chunking". It further adds that chunking is the method that Human Brain uses to absorb information, learns and make the knowledge as instrinsic part of the consciousness so that it becomes a natural activity for repeated applications. (e.g. Car Driving). Learned in this way, Human brain becomes specialized, learns the ability to be reflexive/adaptive and gains the ability to predict the next few steps. And that's the key!. Only few steps not too far!

The book tries to create a link between computational science and Neuro science. It claims the next generation of Business Intelligence does not lie in long predictive analytics, but predicting just-enough, next set of actions.

For example:

1. Who is the next best talent that we can hire from market?
2. What is the in-houst best talent that is subject to attrition risks?
3. Who are the customers/partners that could default in payments?
4. Who are the promising prospects that would convert to customers?
5. What would the customer buy next?

These new business requirements call for new capabilities such as ability to to scan data from multiple sources - structured/unstructured, Internal/External, ability to condense large amount of data into abstract models, drill-down to details on demand, ability to query and navigate the data networks in quick cycles, and finally the ability to predict just enough next few actions.

This doesn't mean we will dump our traditional DW/BI systems. But, We need to be certainly prepared for hybrid new architectures that would blend the conventional data stores with new age data formats!

Would like to conclude this post with another correlation that I recently read - a poem by former Prime Minster of India VP Singh. He is a versatile personality and one of his skills is in poetry. In his poem on Astrology, the Astrologer talks about Singh's fortunes and challenges in the future, VP singh politely asks the astrologer "What is the dream that I would get in tonight's sleep?". Needless to say Astrologer goes speechless! :-)

Any predictions - What is the next topic that I would blog about?

I know it! :-). If you can predict, I promise to compliment you in my next post.

Writing Apps is Wrong!

Yes, this is what ZDNet Blogger Brian Sommer says!. In the post, Brian argues that 'Applications' are wrong perspective to have in todays' times. He adds businesses today don't want apps. Instead they need 'capabilities' to serve different kinds of information to a variety of users in different kind of devices.

Do I agree?. Partly, Yes - to the point that we need a different paradigm to deliver business capabilities.

Let's deep dive a little from this viewpoint.

Adding to Brian's message, my thoughts on Apps follow:

- Applications are old school of thinking.

They are good for accounting/transactional systems but not suitable for unstructured /

dynamic business scenarios.
- They are highly introverted & technical!. [No offense to Introversion! :-) ]
It simply means Apps think about themselves, their structure & data exchange rather than

connectivity to end users and their context.

- Applications are fragmented. Users need to hop-on and hop-off between applications to

accomplish tasks/processes. This gives a disjointed experience in terms of security,

profiling, etc.

- Applications are limited in their orientations - either processes or data.
[Today, we have lot more dimensions to express - social, multi-media, visual, spatial]

Despite new ages capabilities brought by mobile internet devices, We still keep developing applications and deliver in old ways. In fact, We are facing the problem of plenty where there are hundreds/thousands of apps. And We need another new range of apps called 'Helpers' which can assist in navigating the apps market place. (Guided Search).

What is the alternative?

Brian suggests delivering context-specific, Role-based, "smart" information to mobile internet devices through a common UI. He claims such a delivery would empower the end-users by enhancing their "business capabilities". Sounds convincing?. While I agree to the perspective that Apps are old-school, I dont quite agree 'Capabilities' are the way ahead. IMHO, Applications have always been capability enhancers to end users. Its just that they were not smart.

Where do I differ?

In some way, Brian's suggestion of - context-specific, role-based, common UI - reminds me another old school paradigm called 'Portals'. We all had portals in in the past, in the Web world. We have incarnations, in the mobile world as well. And there are quite a few Mobile Portal offerings that aggregate and provide context-specific, role based access to Apps. Yes, You would still have apps. But they would run behind the scenes - behind a Portal facade. And Portals came up with Single Sign-On, Context-Switching, Inter-connectivity, etc.

So, Do Portals solve the Fragementation Problem?. To certain extent, Yes. The flip side was Portals were heavy, resource-intensive and required wiring of applications. Portals were actually "Mega" Apps!.

So, What would be the new paradigm?

In my opinion, Apps and services are inevitable. They will continue to exist in near future as well, from technical implementation perspective. They are the modular units/building blocks of end user capabilities. They can be made "smart" by adding some intelligence to those applications. It is in the hands of the designers/developers to make it smart.

What we need today are - "Coherent Experiences".

For example, any user would have few limited profiles - Family, Work, Leisure, Travel, Learning. Users when login to those respective profiles, they should be able to accomplish their respective tasks/processes with much more ease - because the system proactively understands the context and prepares itself to serve smart information by leveraging the new technical capabilities such as social/video/spatial, etc. They would be inherently capable to provide a coherent experience by interoperating with various apps/services behind the scenes.

I am imagining such a solution would look wonderful on a tablet device or a Microsoft Surface kind of a device that can orchestrate various hardware/software components. Remember - You may still write apps. But the focus is more on orchestration and experience and not on 'creating' or 'building' applications.

I would like to ask - What experience are you trying to orchestrate for your customers?