Phil Simon » Technology

Is Amazon Trying to Do Too Much?

philsimon — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:56:13 +0000

As my recent phone problems have reminded me, few large companies can consistently do things right. Comcast and Verizon have ceaselessly irritated me over the last few weeks with astonishingly frustrating policies, antediluvian information systems, bad data, and ostensibly indifferent attitudes towards customers. These companies have a hard enough time providing just a few products and services.

I started thinking to myself, is it possible for one company to do everything? I had that in my mind as I read an interesting interview in Fortune with Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos. The company has been expanding its offerings and has come a long ways from its days as a dot-com poster child. These days, Amazon is offering a great deal more than just books, CDs, DVDs, and physical goods. It’s no longer just a “B2C” company; its recent forays into cloud computing and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) mean that it has become a “B2B” company. And it has no intentions of stopping.

From the interview:

Fortune: Speaking of picking up new skills to address consumer needs–you’ve addressed some customer needs by making substantial forays into cloud computing with S3, Elastic Compute Cloud, and the Relational Database Service. What’s next for cloud?

Bezos: One of the things you’re seeing is that companies without any legacy are no longer building any data centers. They’ve already stopped. So that’s a testament to how powerful this model is. That the only people still building these data centers are the people that are temporarily corralled into that model because of their legacy. That model is more expensive, less flexible. It’s not just more expensive, but it’s also capital expenditures instead of pay-as-you-go variable costs like it would be if you were using Amazon web services.

Mixed Feelings

I have mixed feelings about this. Part of me thinks that companies with extra compute power and resources might as well sell them. On the other hand, I wonder if Amazon will one day stray from the values that have allowed it to get to this point: specifically, amazing customer service. Based on what Amazon is doing, can it concurrently and effectively be a:

consumer retail company
publishing company
film production company
grocer
reseller of web services

And that’s not it. I was absolutely amazed to read about the number of irons that Amazon has in the fire. In a way, I suppose, this is similar to the Google model of trying 10 ideas, hoping that one will pan out. It seems to me, though, that Google doesn’t try to tackle so many different types of problems so far outside of its core competency.

Feedback

What do you think?

Is Amazon Trying to Do Too Much? is a post from: Phil Simon

Podcast on SaaS and Cloud-Based BI

philsimon — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:59:32 +0000

Cloud-based business intelligence (BI) and Software as a Service (SaaS) BI technologies offer users the potential for faster deployments, increased flexibility, and reduced costs compared with traditional on-premise BI software. But cloud BI, SaaS BI tools and cloud-based data warehousing also raise numerous issues for organizations to consider, including possible performance, scalability, and data security concerns.

In this interview with Craig Stedman of TechTarget, I discuss the maturity and possible uses of cloud BI tools and data warehouses. I also talk about the benefits and challenges of cloud business intelligence. Finally, I offer project management tips, including advice on as well as the questions that companies weighing the cloud approach should ask themselves as well as SaaS BI vendors.

To listen to the podcast, click here.

Podcast on SaaS and Cloud-Based BI is a post from: Phil Simon

Enterprise 2.0 Pilots

philsimon — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:02:19 +0000

Andrew McAfee started an interesting discussion recently with his post Drop the Pilot. McAfee makes no bones about the fact that he isn’t a big fan of pilots for Enterprise 2.0 projects. Both in the comments and in subsequent posts by people like Phil Green, many have weighed in with their thoughts on these type of pilot projects. It’s high time for me to chime in.

My Definition of Enterprise 2.0

Before continuing, a definition is in order. I don’t define E2.0 in the same way that McAfee does in his eponymous book or on his blog. McAfee’s definition largely focuses on collaboration and social software in the enterprise. I go a bit further.

In The Next Wave of Technologies, I define Enterprise 2.0 a bit more broadly to include emerging technologies such as SOA, MDM, SaaS, clouds, BI, social networking, open source, and others. From my book’s first chapter:

Simon Says: Context Matters

As for the pros and cons of pilots, I understand both sides of the argument. Consider two extremes:

Company X: A large and overly complex organization with a terrible history of managing IT projects, a dysfunctional culture, non-existent data governance, and other undesirable attributes.
Company Y: A nimble startup with few hurdles, relatively good data, and a successful history of agile software development.

How can one credibly make the claim that Company X should undertake even a small Enterprise 2.0 pilot? Let’s say that Company X wanted to move their apps and data over to the cloud. They would just be adding further complexity to their existing architecture. On the other hand, Company Y can probably jump in with both feet.

These are two extremes and obviously most organizations and IT projects will fall in between them. Industry, type of application, organizational culture, risks, rewards, and other factors need to be considered before undertaking a pilot project. I hate to sound like a traditional consultant, but it depends on many variables. To me, an unequivocal stance makes little sense.

Feedback

What do you think?

Photo from Simon Arramore.

Enterprise 2.0 Pilots is a post from: Phil Simon

Everything Is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger

philsimon — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 11:56:01 +0000

Serendipity is an interesting thing. I had just hit the “publish” button on my recent post Tell me a Story, a quasi-rant that underscores (at least for me) the need to draw readers in via compelling stories and anecdotes. Needing some time away from the screen, I picked up my copy of Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger. I had heard good things about it and was searching for a good read.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Printing Supplies

Everything Is Miscellaneous starts out with the great story of how Staples stores are arranged. To paraphrase Renee Zellwegger’s character in Jerry MacGuire, this book had me at “Staples.”

Why are printer cartridges and cables in more than one place? Because not everyone walks into the store to buy printer cartridges and cables for precisely the same reason.

Some people already own printers and cartridge refills. They will look for cartridges in a dedicated section and it would never occur to most of them to go to printers.
Some people need to buy new printers; it’s easier for them to stay in that section and get everything they need at once. They don’t want to go to another section of the store. Nor do they want to return to the store and feel stupid for not remembering that printers don’t come with everything needed to print documents from their computer.

And that’s the whole point of the book: different people find similar things in different ways and for vastly different reasons. Everything is rife with great anecdotes and case studies supporting the author’s central thesis. Hamlet, Flickr, and Wikipedia are just a few of the examples manifesting the importance of shared knowledge and more efficient ways of searching the vast streams of information today.

Beautiful Trees and The Third Order of Order

Physical stores like Staples are constrained by where they place items. This is not the case with the web. Weinberger writes:

“In the third order of order, a leaf can hang on many branches, it can hang on different branches for different people, and it can change branches for the same person if she decides to look at the subject differently. It’s not that our knowledge of the world is taking some shape other than a tree or becoming some impossible-to-envision four-dimensional tree. In the third order of order, knowledge doesn’t have a shape. There are just too many useful, powerful, and beautiful ways to make sense of our world.”

From a technology standpoint, this can only happen online with pervasive and accurate tagging and metadata.

Polarizing Topic?

For me, the timing of reading this book (although released in 2007) could not have been better. Lately, I’ve been reading, writing, thinking, talking, and learning a great deal about the semantic web. Everything enhanced my knowledge of the topic, although it’s not formally mentioned until page 190 or so.

Evidently, not everyone shares my viewpoint on the book nor on the importance of the semantic web. I saw the one star reviews for the book on Amazon. To me, it’s evident that some people refuse to see how internet is changing things–and will continue to do so.

Everything Is Miscellaneous is an important book for not understanding what’s going on now, but what’s going to happen with the web as it “goes semantic.” I blew through this book in two days, unable to put it down. Great read.

Everything Is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger is a post from: Phil Simon

The Delicate Balance Between Busyness and Simplicity

philsimon — Tue, 18 May 2010 10:30:39 +0000

Back in November, I completed my switch to a WordPress site and my only complaint is that I waited so long. I have become a bit of WordPress nut over the last few months, obsessed with different tweaks, plug-ins, and widgets. It can be very addicting.

It’s not all roses, though. At least for me, the problem with having so many website options parallels “white board” software development. More often than not, I’d argue that in both cases there are major benefits to restrictions and parameters. Take away practical limitations, and it’s almost hard to decide on what to do, how to do it, and where to put it. And this is with a committee of one (me). Imagine a team of five people, even with relatively similar viewpoints. Can someone say “creative differences”?

Too Many Options

I’m hardly the first to write this, but colors, font sizes, layouts, column widths, and the like are quite important on web sites. A recent post by Jim Connolly does a great job of explaining why these things matter so much. Connolly cites the benefits of the Headway WordPress theme, and I’ll admit that it does look pretty cool. Still, I shudder to think about being able to easily alter anything and everything. It’s akin to going to the supermarket and having to decide among 50 different types of potato chips or orange juice.

Remember that most people don’t like having to figure out where everything is upon revisiting your site. Facebook’s redesigns have met with, at best, mixed results.

Simon Says: The Balance Between Too Busy and Too Simple

My primary complaint with many websites is that they’re too busy. I won’t call out any by name here, but we’ve all seen them. When compared with particularly chaotic sites, give me simplicity any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

But there is such a thing as “too simple.” I know of sites that lack core functionality expected and even required these days, such as search bars. Yes, I know that I can use Google to search within a site. It’s sad when I have to resort to that, though. Adding a search widget or snippet of code isn’t terribly hard and, to be sure, the squeeze is worth the juice.

Also, as Connolly points out in his post, you’ll never make everyone happy. Don’t try. I’d argue that the best sites use their real estate wisely and don’t constantly make major changes to layouts. As for truly innovative layouts and designs, they’re few and far between. Check out the new blog of my developer, Shiri Amram.

Feedback

Where do you stand on the trade-off between simplicity and busyness? Which parts of sites these days are essential and which are annoying? Are you an tinkerer like me?

The Delicate Balance Between Busyness and Simplicity is a post from: Phil Simon

Chris Brogan’s iPad Struggles and Simon’s Second Law of Technology

philsimon — Wed, 12 May 2010 08:49:42 +0000

Like many people these days, I have been following Chris Brogan’s recent iPad problems. Given the recent hacks on his site, I doubt that it’s his biggest problem these days. At least for Chris there’s a silver lining with being so popular: His loyal followers are helping him as much as they can. (Go community!)

iPad Issues

A few weeks ago, I complained about the iPad’s lack of multi-tasking. Along these lines, Chris has pointed out some compatibility issues with different applications relating to word processing and presentations, both of which are critical to a high-profile speaker like him. These have frustrated Chris and, based on reading his posts, they would drive me nuts as well. (As my friends know, I’m hardly the most patient person in the world. There. I’ve said it.)

Then yesterday I listened to an interesting podcast with my friend Scott Berkun on the “boring” future of user interfaces. Scott questions why many people unnecessarily complain about traditional UIs and platforms. Aren’t our existing ones good enough? What specifically is so deficient about mouses and keyboards? Are they preventing you from doing something in particular?

I started asking myself the following questions:

Am I becoming permanently ingrained using “my” technologies in a certain way? Like many, I was outraged at the new UI for MS Office 2007.
Am I looking for reasons to reject new technologies, applications, and versions–especially when they’re not essential and very different?
Technology-wise, how many things can one try (much less effectively use) on a regular basis?
Is this just prudence? (I can’t tell you how glad I am that I never upgraded to Microsoft Vista.)

Now I know that this isn’t just me. More than a few people have told me that they’ve struggled without a “right click” button on Apple computers.

Simon’s Second Law of Technology

All of this leads me to my second law: Change becomes harder the longer that you work with existing technologies. This accompanies my first law: Never buy the first version of anything.

Feedback

What do you think? Are you finding change harder as you get older and more accustomed to doing things in a certain way? With so many new things out there, are there limits to how many technologies and toys that you can digest?

Chris Brogan’s iPad Struggles and Simon’s Second Law of Technology is a post from: Phil Simon

Social Media Resistance: Déjà Vu All Over Again

philsimon — Tue, 11 May 2010 09:13:03 +0000

“This is like déjà vu all over again.”

- Yogi Berra

Last week, I railed against sites that appeared to be stuck in the 1990s. In my view, many sites lack a compelling reason (read: content) for people to ever come back. It’s something that I’ve discussed with quite a few people lately.

Against this backdrop, I recently read an interesting post detailing the six reasons that companies are resisting social media. I’m a little surprised that more organizations haven’t gotten with the program. According to some numbers I’ve seen, something like 80% of organizations don’t use social media at all. What’s more, according to a Robert Half International study (admittedly a whopping seven months old), 54% of companies ban their employees from using social media at work.

Haven’t we been here before?

Does anyone else remember the discussions that took place in many business circles in the mid- to late-1990s? I have vivid recollections of many senior people doubting that their organizations even needed a web presence. Period.

Fast forward to today. I can’t help but think of the following questions:

Have you heard anyone make the “websites don’t matter” argument (sans intoxicants) in the last five years?
Do you see any parallels between that period and the inception of social media?
Is everything old new again?

Photo by Cwithe , used under the Creative Commons license.

Social Media Resistance: Déjà Vu All Over Again is a post from: Phil Simon

How Enterprise 2.0 Will Enable the Semantic Web

philsimon — Mon, 10 May 2010 10:00:57 +0000

As I write this, I am nearly finished with the best and most challenging book that I have read in years. The book is Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business by David Siegel. I couldn’t wait to finish it before posting about it.

What is the semantic web?

You may not be familiar with the semantic web. Six months ago, I sure wasn’t. So let’s get the definition out of the way. According to Wikipedia, it is

an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the meaning (semantics) of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to “understand” and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.^[1]^[2] It derives from World Wide Web Consortium director Sir Tim Berners-Lee‘s vision of the Web as a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange.

Some have referred to the semantic web as Web 3.0.

While perhaps a decade away by some estimates, such as a recent report by Pew Research, thousands of people are working right now on making it a reality.

Examples

The industries and examples covered in Siegel’s book run the gamut. Relatively recent ones such as search will be transformed, as will more established ones such as the law. Consider the latter for a moment. With the semantic web and personal data lockers, contracts may be automatically updated when one or more parties changes states. For example, let’s say that I have an agreement to sell oranges to a supermarket in New York City. I decided to take my business to Ohio and, as a result, my contract will tell me if I need to apply for different licenses. (Yes, you read right.) Paperwork will be filed automatically with the appropriate agencies in my new state. Any work required by lawyers will involve actual legal interpretation and analysis, not administrative activities for which I’m being grossly overcharged.

Sound far-fetched? Perhaps. But it’s coming and it’s going to change the web as we know it, not to mention how we work and live.

Siegel also cites the failure of many “knowledge management” systems. Most were, at best, ultimately incomplete for one simple reason: they depended upon typically overworked people entering updates and information into them. That’s hardly a recipe for success.

The solution is the concept of an ontology, something enabled by the semantic web. At a high level, an ontology automates the learning process for systems, allowing for a comprehensive and commonly understood set of assumptions, facts, and descriptions. This obviates the need for anyone to manually update projects and repositories of information. Using ontologies takes care of that for us.

Enterprise 2.0

How does all of this fit in with Enterprise 2.0? What do cloud computing, SaaS, social media, and the like have to do with the semantic web?

Long story short: Enterprise 2.0 technologies will free people and organizations from the shackles of often less-than-valuable activities. Let’s say that an organization begins using a cloud or SaaS provider for its applications, freeing it from the burden of maintaining them. For example, let’s say that application patches and upgrades are now handled by Amazon’s cloud offering. The cost savings allow that organization to hire employees–or redeploy existing ones–to take on tasks essential to the development of the business. The amount of time requird for system maintenance should drop.

Imagine if a company (call it Acme) transformed its applicant tracking systems to embrace the hresume microformat. Rather than relying on simple and often ineffective keyword searches to find applicants who may or may not meet their needs, recruiters hiring managers would be automatically alerted when much more qualified applicants announce their availability to the world. What’s more, that information is automatically and accurately imported into Acme’s systems, allowing for future matches based on changing business needs.

Conclusion

The semantic web is going to be a game changer. We’ll have to go through Web 2.0 to get to Web 3.0 first. Stay tuned.

Of course, that’s just my opinion. What do you think?

How Enterprise 2.0 Will Enable the Semantic Web is a post from: Phil Simon

Interview with Jay Baer on Social Media’s Internal Impact

philsimon — Tue, 04 May 2010 09:30:31 +0000

I recently did an interview with Jay Baer of Convince and Convert in which I discuss the impact of social media and networking within organizations.

Here’s an excerpt:

Jay Baer: There is of course relentless chatter about social media ROI and success metrics. Measuring social media is viable, but not obvious. Is the same true in adoption of new technologies? How should companies evaluate success?

Phil Simon: Great question. The ROI of many Enterprise 2.0 technologies can be relatively easily derived. For example, an organization that would have spent $5M over ten years on a traditional ERP or CRM application (bought from an on-premise vendor) may spend $1M on a SaaS alternative such as Workday or salesforce.com. Alternatively, an organization may use the open source LAMP stack and OpenOffice and save a great deal on software licenses. Note that open source does not mean free, however.

For other technologies, the ROI is a bit tougher to quantify. How does one easily put a value on better data management via MDM? What is the precise ROI of being able to understand your customer base better via business intelligence (BI) applications?

While ROI is important, a discussion of evaluating success and benefits is remiss without considering risks—that’s why there’s a chapter on enterprise risk management. Any new major enterprise technology endeavor introduces risk. However, many times not doing something is actually the bigger risk.

You can read the entire interview by clicking here.

Interview with Jay Baer on Social Media’s Internal Impact is a post from: Phil Simon

90s Sites and Stickiness

philsimon — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:00:35 +0000

I’ll be the first to admit that this post isn’t rocket science or particularly innovative. You can probably find thousands of similar posts that cover the same ground. Some of them are probably even pretty well written. At the same time, though, I felt the need to write it for one reason: Quite frankly, there are quite a few people and organizations stuck in the technological ice ages.

Let me explain what I mean.

A few weeks ago, I joined a local Chamber of Commerce with the typical expectations: to network and meet potential partners and clients. As is the norm at networking events, I exchange handshakes and business cards with established business owners from many different industries. After I return home, invariably I’ll go to these companies’ sites and give them a quick once-over. To be sure, some organizations’ sites are more visually appealing and social media-friendly than others. At their worst, I have seen some sites that are completely non-interactive relics of the mid-1990s. For the purposes of this post, let’s call them 90s Sites.

90s Sites

You know the type of sites that I’m talking about. They all have the standard pages:

Home
About
Products and/or Services
Contact
Testimonials

Now, there’s nothing wrong with 90s Sites per se. It’s just that they could be more. So much more. Anyone can quickly scan 90s Sites within two minutes. Most important, there’s no reason for coming back. Ever. 90s Sites are essentially glorified brochures.

Think about it. As Chris Brogan points out in this video for ABC news, you don’t buy magazines for the ads. You don’t watch TV for the commercials.

Deficiencies

What specifically are 90s Sites lacking? Forget aesthetics for a moment. Give me a bare bones site with valuable content over a pretty brochure any day of the week and twice on Sunday. My friend Jim Harris’ site is the antithesis of the term “cluttered”, but it’s easy to navigate and devoid of superfluous “stuff.” I like to think that my own site strikes that balance as well.

These days, whether your organization does mortgages or legal services, it needs to have the following items on its site:

An integrated blog within the main site. Why you’d send someone away from your main site to a separate blog is beyond me.
Meaningful and well-written posts. You don’t have to blog every day, but to me once per month is simply not enough.
Social media icons for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and other ways to connect and share information.
Ways to subscribe to content (which is a bit irrelevant since 90s Sites really provide no reason to subscribe).
Multimedia content such as videos or podcasts.

This doesn’t mean that a lawyer divulges the specifics of her case on her blog. Nor should a mortgage company explain specifically why they rejected me. I’m talking about general tips, pieces of advice, or articles rife with valuable information. In a phrase: meaningful content coupled with common sense.

Benefits

Again, in all likelihood, if you’re reading this post, I’m probably preaching to the choir here. For those skeptics, however, “getting with the program” will result in the following:

Increased Alexa and Google Page ranks
Increased traffic and, quite possibly, inquires for products and services
Increased information about your customer base
Increased stickiness and time on site
Increased “buzz”
Decreased bounce rate
Increased probability of additional business. Note that I’ll never make the cause-effect argument here.

I could go on, but to me the pros outweigh the cons here by an order of magnitude. My fundamental question is, “Would you go to your site and stick around?”

Common Excuses

So, in keeping with one of my new year’s resolutions to “get out from behind the computer” more, I’ve had coffee with a number of these folks. Over the course of the discussion, we’ll talk about social media, the Internet, and blogging.

So, what’s preventing these organizations from making the jump? The usual suspects are:

I don’t understand social media.
Social media is a waste of time.
Social media is fad.
I don’t have the time.
I wouldn’t know where to start.
It’s not my job to do social media.
It probably costs a great deal of money to redo a website.

I can’t refute every objection here but, suffice it to so, it’s not that hard to blog once in a while and add social media integration. Content management systems such as WordPress are not terribly difficult to install and manage.

Simon Says

If you think that the web is going to revert to an erstwhile time, then I have some beepers that I’d like to sell you. I’m a big believer that, if you believe that something is valuable, then you’ll find the time and resources to do it.

What’s stopping you?

Photo by J.Down, used under Creative Commons license.

90s Sites and Stickiness is a post from: Phil Simon