Wille Faler’s Buzzword Bingo

Interesting piece from Om Malik’s broadband blog:

But when it came to persistent storage, he pointed out, they started talking about it as soon as they had a beta, putting startups and other firms planning such a service on notice that Amazon would enter that market.

“We wanted to make sure people had a look at our roadmap,” Vogels said. “Our goal is to be very respectful and recognize the value of the ecosystem.”

It seems Amazon recognizes the value of the eco-system being built around their web services - they would rather be the keystone in a large, healthy business eco-system, than alone control a small eco-system that is withering away. Good news for startups.

For those of us who tasted our first “battle” in IT and entrepreneurship during the dizzy heights of the dotcom-bubble, one of the defining publications of the time was The Industry Standard, a magazine that rose to prominense during the bubble and went bust with the demise of that era.

Well, mourn no more, The Industry Standard is now back, with the appropriate Web 2.0 bells and whistles to go. It remains to be seen whether the Standard can yet again climb to prominence, or if it will just be one last horraah for the nostalgics.

I have to admit, I’m a bit hard on salespeople: if I perceive them as too pushy, I will cut them quicker than they can say “lost commission”. If I perceive them as uninterested in helping me, I’m not going to give them any second chances. I simply loathe people that are either completely uninterested in helping others, or try to take advantage of others at any cost.

Therein lies the problem: most salespeople tend to fall into one of the two categories - either they are being pushy, hot on getting their commission, or they just don’t seem to care and are very unhelpful even down to actually taking your money if you actually do hand it over. I think the problem is that salespeople are too focused on what they want: either their commission, or just have a relaxing day with no customers hassling them.

I tend to think that salespeople should really be neither. What they really should try to be is a “consultant” to the customer - guide the customer in the area where they may have a knowledge advantage, and try to work out in collaboration with the customer what they might want and at what sort of price. That type of salesperson understands that their interests can actually be aligned with the client, they don’t need to pull one over them, instead they are best served by finding the client a good deal that will make them happy (and potentially come back for more at a later stage, or at least recommend their friends). With the risk of using a cliche that I try to avoid like the plague: They have to understand what a win-win situation is all about, and not just talk about “win-win” as some sort of closing technique to used against the customer.

Good sales, buying, and the essence of an exchange in a free market is that both parties perceive themselves as better off after an exchange - and that means helping each other to achieve each others goals, not trying to pull a fast one.

2007 is officially over, and it’s time to lift your eyes and look towards the horizon. I don’t want to be any worse than anyone else making predictions, so here are my predictions for the moust groundbreaking trends in technology and business to watch in 2008:

IP Telephony goes beyond cheap phone calls
The convergence between telephony and IT has so far been mostly about cheap and free phone calls, the natural evolution of new technology and new possibilities is to mimic the old, so it is to be expected. But just as the Internet has ended up being about more than e-commerce, advertising and e-mails, so will IP telephony: lower entry barriers and commoditized infrastructure means that tomorrows winners will create new services unheard of before and enabled by new technology. Technology and features previously only available to telecoms and large corporations will be simplified and put in the hands of SMB’s and individuals - people will be able to create their own “call plans” and call destinations to suit their lifestyle, and location based services will merge with voice services. Interesting times indeed.

Virtualization takes a step to the next level
The potential of virtualization has thus far only been scratched on the surface, VMWare, Xen, Amazon EC2 et al open up interesting possibilities, but so far it has mostly been limited to manually being able to duplicate pre-existing “virtual machines” dedicated for specific purposes.
I predict that the next step will be the obsolesence of traditional web- and server hosting: utility computing such as Amazon’s EC2 will not only be about only paying for the machine hours you use, but also accurately being able to scale infrastructure up and down transparently and automatically as traffic and load differ. Organizations will be able to pay not only for the resources they use, but also for exactly the computing resources they need and not any more or less, this will enable finance managers to sleep easy over the use of their budgets, and IT managers to sleep easy knowing a sudden spike won’t kill their applications.

Social Networking becomes distributed
Let’s face it, Facebook and all the other social networking sites work in a way that is very “un-internet like”, they are big central repositories - if you are on one network and your friend is on another, there is no way to connect the two of you. For the promise of social networking sites to really be fulfilled, social networking sites need to become interoperable and distributed - your online identity should be transparent and portable in the same way that your e-mail address can be e-mailed from any domain, or your phone number can be called from any telephone network.

Credit checks get an overhaul and reputation becomes a factor
The current credit crunch has thrown a light at a few shortcomings of the current credit- and credit checking system, it is simply too easy to manipulate if you know how to do it, and people with perfectly good ability to pay can be penalized for frivolous and nonsensical reasons. Maybe credit checking agencies will start taking a more holistic approach, not only looking into traditional sources of financial information, but also starting to measure more intangible areas that concern a persons overall “reputation”. There are several start-ups trying to deal with online reputation, but I think this area is most valuable to credit checking agencies, and they stand best positioned to make inroads into the area - some leading reputation start-ups may be bought out by credit agencies late into the game, but watch this space for credit agencies starting to care more about your character and slightly less about whom you’ve got loans with.

The man on the street will start watching the watchers
Three out of four trends mentioned above are also potential privacy threats, as we become more and more monitored in all aspects of our professional, private and social lives, there are bound to be some considerable privacy scares - the UK has already seen it’s fair share of Government screw-ups in this area in the last half of 2007. As these screw-ups become more and more common, and larger and larger in scale from both government and private organizations, people will start to care more about their privacy and personal information.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we get a “terror balance” between people and those who monitor us.
People will be monitored by various organizations, and start-ups will pop up that allow people to monitor in more detail how they in turn are monitored and how their personal information is used - and object in cases where their information is faulty, objectionable or they do not consent to how they are monitored and their information is used.

Did you ever wonder what happened to early nineties one-hit-wonder MC Hammer? Well neither did I, but apparently he is throwing his hat into the “Web 2.0″ startup scene, by starting a company called “Dance Jam”, which is best described as a “social network meets YouTube for home made dance videos” sort of site, where people can post their own videos of themselves dancing, and challenge other users to “dance offs”.

To most of us, the concept might sound just about as silly as MC Hammer’s pants, but if they just clear the obvious potential copyright issues and get the rest right, I actually think it might be the sort of thing that can get a niche and/or cult following on the Internet (stranger things have happened)..

I have just come back from my yearly Christmas tour of visiting my mother in Sweden and my father in Finland. Doing what I do, I am always asked to look at one or the other computer related problem on my visits.
Suffice to say, it is a thoroughly humbling experience to help my mother or my father - their computer literacy is limited to say the least, but probably indicative of at least 50% of computer users. Sending and receiving e-mails is a big problem (biggest culprit in computing problems: Outlook, I always get Outlook related questions, most of them related to “send and receive”..), any website with more than rudimentary navigation and very simple forms are challenging to the degree that they are close to giving up.
To give a “for instance”: this summer when I was on holiday I received an empty e-mail from my dad, I knew instantly that if he bothered with trying to send me e-mail something important was going on, and just as I assumed, when I called him up it turned out that my 90 year old grandmother had been admitted to the hospital at the time (she is fine now and with as sharp a mind as ever, although of fragile health as you would expect of a 90-year old).

The point of these observations is that the flashy, feature rich “Web 2.0″ sites of the last years are for the most part too complex and too feature rich for a big subset of internet users, no matter what they say or claim about emphasis on “user friendliness”. If sending and receiving simple e-mails in Outlook or Gmail is hard work for a lot of Internet users, you can only begin to imagine what social networking, blogging or any number of other internet activities are to them: overwhelming and overcomplex (example: I’m sure my mother or father would love a service like Flickr - but Flickr in its current incarnation is just too complex for them to even remotely understand how to use).

This brings me to the value proposition of keeping things simple - not only in terms of what you, as a super user perceive as simple, but keeping things super simple. To make an analogy to my toys of choice from my childhood: the average reader of this blog is probably the computer and internet user equivalent of a Technic Lego enthusiast, but the fact remains that a big subset of users, my parents included are barely comfortable with the equivalent of Duplo Lego internet- and computing usage.

If you really want to make your software or website accessible to a large mass of internet users, it is probably worth putting extreme constraints on your product: cut out any feature or “user friendly” bells and whistles that are not absolutely essential for the use of it. Cut down choices and options to a bare minimum, so that most tasks can be executed in a straight linear fashion with a minimum of confusion.
If you don’t, the early adopters may like your product, but your mother and father most likely won’t.

Just paying a salary to employees has a strong draw for companies: any surplus value created by the employee is a profit for the shareholders. But personally, I think just paying employees a salary is problematic in most industries where you cannot enforce a steady level of productivity (such as manufacturing).

For knowledge- and service based companies, a plain salary for employees is probably the surest way of making sure that the organization slowly starts rotting from within.
Let me elaborate a little - In knowledge- and service based industries, I feel it is crucial that employees motivations are aligned with those of the organization, it’s goals, values and bottom line. Any assymetries of motivation will show itself in a number of ways, which most people can probably relate to:

• People will work “just enough”, and won’t put in more effort than is expected of them. Unless your employees are half-wits who enjoy the ungrateful task of being unpaid pack mules, this will happen.
• If you still push your employees beyond “just enough”, the word “push” will be what is remembered. People will become disgruntled. What’s in it for them?
• People will start spending the company’s money in ways they would never spend their own money: frivolous expenses, project spending out of control and spending more aimed at covering individual behinds, than being cost effective.
• Prestige takes presedence over profits: people will put their personal prestige over anything else. Politicking will pervade and unprofitable projects and endevours will not be cut even if there is nothing else at stake than some individuals personal prestige.

These are just a few examples of what will happen if people only have a salary as their sole motivation. Sure, some (probably quite a lot of) people will see personal prestige, professional pride and integrity as further motivations, but if peoples motivations are not in line with those of a company, all of the above will start to pervade within the organisation sooner or later even if you have 20-25% of employees being top performers.

Traditional salaried employment in knowledge industries is simply uneffective and bad - don’t be surprised if costs run out of control and profit margins dwindle if a salary is all you give your employees, the reason is very simple: your employees simply do what is in their rational self interest, and those interests are not the same as yours.

Most people like to think that they are somewhat rational, yet in real life 95% of people will not face the facts, even if they get slapped hard in the face by them. Looking at any of the property development TV shows in the UK will give you first hand examples of this: half-witted people wanting to try “property development” break every rule in the book - they build their “dream home” at a price over the odds, instead if building for their buyers. They hold out for prices the market just won’t carry, because they look at how much profit they want given their spend, rather than the other way around. The list goes on and on.

The same thing is pervasive in IT projects, startups and large organizations alike: a project may slip, have setbacks  and everyone will know in their heart of hearts that the project will never hit its original deadline, yet the original deadline is not moved one bit until that last minute “oh shit!”-moment. Sound familiar?

Wishful thinking may be one of the most destructive forces we have in our minds - optimism is a good thing, but it should be coupled with realism. Wishful thinking will only make you drive your car straight of the cliff into the abyss. Don’t think for a second that “what you want” to happen will happen just because you want it, it never will.

“Software As A Service”, or SAAS has been a hot thing over the last couple of years, and it does hold a lot of benefits: no need for management or maintenance, automatic updates, (hopefully) automatic backups, very transparent and predictable costs and much, much more. A lot of SAAS products are just webified versions of existing software, with a few improvements, whereas other types of SAAS products owe their whole existence to the Internet, and would not have been possible without it (most notably many applications where collaboration is a central part).

But, there is one very important area where SAAS tends to fail miserably: continuity.
A SAAS service can and will only exist for as long as it is economically viable and profitable (in some way) to its vendor. If a service is a loss making proposition, and does not show any signs of being turned around most companies will cut it quicker than you can say “lost data”.
This poses a very real problem for SAAS customers: if a service is important or critical for your daily operations, how do you safeguard your data and investment in a SAAS service? Remember, you don’t own the infrastructure or IP for the service, so if it is cut, you’re out of luck.

In my mind, the hierarchy of trustworthy software goes something like this:

1. Open Source software: you can access the IP, change it and control how you want to use and develop in the future - the risk is very small.
2. Proprietary software: support and updates may be cut, but at least you own the initial license, and the right to continue using the old software and it’s data as long as you can and want.
3. SAAS software: see above..

This doesn’t mean I think SAAS is an entirely bad idea, just a risky one: I personally use some services that I find useful. But my point is, that you should think twice before trusting critical parts of your business to a SAAS platform, and if you do you should take very careful precautions to safeguard your data and investments, so that you always have an exit route, should the vendor cut or dramatically change the service.
Finally, SAAS vendors would do well by trying to be transparent about both their plans and their platform. Providing data export services or functions would go a long way towards this. Doing this may lower switching costs for their customers, and may not be in the immediate obvious interest of the vendor, but then again providing transparency and a sense of security for your clients may actually draw more new clients than it enables old clients to leave..

Every organization needs a couple of rebels that can inject fresh ideas into it. I’m saying “a couple”, because a good “rebel-to-status quo person”-ratio is probably required: A single rebel can be easily silenced in a sea of status quo, either by having his ideas universally rejected, or by becoming demotivated and disillusioned with the slowly turning wheels of change.
If you have a couple of rebels, the voice of “dissent” will be heard louder, and the dissenters can spur each other on, keep each other motivated in their quest for change.

But why are rebels so important for organizations? Simple: most people are creatures of habit, they like the status quo, regardless of how mediocre it may be. Rebels on the other hand are the inventors, entrepreneurs and change agents of organizations, large and small, entrepreneurial and bureaucratic. Without the rebels most organizations would soon wither and die of obsolesence.
Rebels are the reason we have the wheel, fire, electricity, refrigerators, cars, computers and other everyday technologies. Had everyone been a Status Quo person, we might still have been living in caves, eating raw meat and dying at 30.

The rebels are the agents of change that drive any organisation, nation or people forward.