This week in links - week 26, 2008

From an article in AdvertisingAge called "Social Networking Will Go Mainstream" by David Armano:

I like to think of my multiple networks as my "social system" (see diagram). The ones that add long-term value are the ones I maintain.

As social networks become mainstream, it will be business as usual. We'll log onto our network of choice, just as we log onto e-mail and sift through the spam. And we'll be making up our minds about brands and people along the way. Those who spam us will become a nuisance, something to tolerate. And those who make it worth our time will be rewarded with our trust and maybe even loyalty. As marketers and individuals, the choice to add value or generate more noise is ours to make.

"Can Cloud Computing Actually Save the Internet?" by Ron Miller:

Given that all the transactions are actually crossing the internet, however, it would make sense that it would simply add to the increasingly clogged byways of the internet. But when I spoke to representatives from Google and Salesforce.com at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston last week and asked them about this (in separate conversations, I might add), I was surprised to hear them argue the opposite—that Cloud computing could actually *reduce* traffic.

Both argued in separate conversations that it would actually reduce traffic because instead of moving large files around many times, you are actually moving around references to the files sitting on their back-end servers and most of the heavy lifting would not be on the internet itself, but on the company server infrastructure.

If you buy this argument, you could see where increasing use of the cloud actually reduces the pressure on the internet pipes as people stop moving large documents around using email and instead point to a file on cloud vendor’s servers.

"How Web 2.0 creates value" by Ross Dawson:

Web 2.0 for business
The many applications of Web 2.0 in business include increasing employee productivity with collaboration tools and better access to information, gaining insights into consumer attitudes and behaviours, engaging customers in personal relationships and providing personalised customer service.

Web 2.0 for consumers
Some consumer uses of Web 2.0 tools are to communicate with their friends and family, find out what products and services others have liked and manage their lives more effectively.

Web 2.0 for creators
Creators of art, video, photos, music, writing and more can share their creations, collaborate with others in developing them and get rewarded for their creativity.

Web 2.0 for investors
Through Web 2.0 start-ups, investors can access the fastest growing sector of the economy, establish low-cost trial ventures and reach global markets.

Web 2.0 for innovation
Web 2.0 tools help innovators to collaborate across boundaries and connect their ideas to the global marketplace.

Google opens up Google Docs for developers and provides new data visualization features

"Collaboration goes one level deeper" according to the Google Docs team by giving developers outside of their team tools to extend Google Docs using the Google Gadgets platform.

"Developers now have an easy way to both add features to Google Docs (in spreadsheets to start) and to pull collaborative data from Google Docs into gadgets on iGoogle and other platforms"

"We joined forces with the Google Visualization team, who developed a common data delivery method, starting with data from our spreadsheets...//...This is really an exciting feature for us, as it gives spreadsheet collaborators more than a dozen new ways to look at their data -- including animated charts from the Google Finance and Trendalyzer teams as well as Pivot tables, Funnel charts and Gantt charts from a few of our beta developer collaborators (Panorama, Infosoft Global and Viewpath, respectively). And that's really just the beginning... so don't stop asking for more."

Boris Evelson at Forrester commented this release earlier today:

"This morning, Google will unveil a beta version of its spreadsheet application with some new advanced features, such as Pivot Table. The Pivot Table is a product developed by Panorama, a small, but upcoming BI vendor (they are currently being evaluated in detail by Forrester BI Wave ’08), who were, interestingly enough, the original inventors of Microsoft Analysis Services OLAP (Online Analytic Processing) engine. So now, part of Panorama code will be inside two of the biggest software companies in the world!"

"With this new feature, every Google spreadsheet user will have access to powerful OLAP, as a free BI SaaS add-on to Google Docs. In my opinion - a very wise move by Google to continue to push Google Docs into enterprises. "

Links 2007-11-20

Andy Mulholland asks what's new in collaboration with Web 2.0 in his post "Mesh Working rather than Matrix Working" on Cap Gemini CTO blog. Here are some excerpts:

"...Strong collaboration is people centric and based upon a ‘pull’ model of finding, and asking, experts to work with you in providing answers. By contrast Weak collaboration is data centric relying on a push model to send content to those who need it. In weak collaboration we attempt to collaborate with people using email as an example, but our closed close coupled environment only allows us to contact the people we directly know exist and believe may be able to help."

"Competitive advantage is shifting from the cost management of transactions in the back office to business optimisation in the front office and the external market. Globalisation is forcing all enterprises to compete in this space so ultimately Mesh working is being driven as a necessary response to a changing Business world. It’s a World that takes us way beyond internal agility, and flexibility, through Matrix working, and into external responsiveness through Mesh working."

Another interesting post is "Why IT Operations hate SaaS" by David Linthicum, The Intelligent Enterprise Weblog. He provides an analysis why the increasing use of SaaS "creates headaches for IT operations folks":

"The dilemma is that while IT operations wants to continue to control all applications, including SaaS, there is little they can actually do to resolve issues. Or, is that completely true?"

"...with SaaS you're limited to the network and the applications, typically only understanding whether it's working, or not (outages). SaaS providers understand this issue and do open up points of management where IT operations can check on the status of their SaaS-delivered IT resources. You can monitor availability, performance and even the provider's ability to live up to Service Level Agreements (SLAs). It's just a matter of pointing your management infrastructure at the SaaS provider, and thus having a holistic look at all critical systems, internal and external."

What Characterizes the SaaS Software Delivery Model?

How do you quality a software vendor as a SaaS vendor? They might call themselves that, but are they really keeping the promise?

The definition of SaaS is quite fuzzy, but here is an attempt to list some of the key characteristics (some of them from Wikipedia.org) of SaaS as software delivery model:

• Commercially available software
• Multiple customers run the same software (instance) but with virtually separate data stores
• Accessed remotely via the Internet
• Rich application interface
• Centralized updates
• Frequent updates possible without disturbing the service
• Designed to be scalable
• Well-defined and documented API
• Adaptable by configuration
• Extensible to customer-specific needs
• Adaptions and extensions can be done by customer or third party supplier
• Supports reuse by application exchange
• Tools are available for operating, monitoring and control
• Customers pay for their consumption and not (in advance) for the development of the service

Why SaaS is an Attractive Software Delivery Model

A few years ago, I was product manager for an ASP application called Spirello Express for creating and maintaining web sites. It was offered as a service for a small subscription fee and targeted specifically small businesses. By today's standards it would definitely have qualified as a SaaS application since it was developed as a web application by a software development company with expertise in modern internet development technologies such as XML, XSLT and Web Services. Even though the service was hard to sell at the time for various reasons (such as low interest in the web among small businesses), I found the SaaS software delivery model to be very attractive and having great potential. Here are some of the things I liked the most.

• You can build a user community to get feedback about the service and its features and easily ask about desired enhancements.
• There is no real need bundling a lot of features and enhancements into big releases, given that the current software and interface design is scalable and that the service does not have to be changed in its foundation when new features are added. Instead, you can continuously release new and enhanced features in a way that goes along very well with iterative and incremental software development processes. It also lets you respond to competition faster that with traditional software delivery models.
• You can sneak out new features and enhancements under the "beta test" cover and let your users evaluate them to determine if they add value or not and what enhancements to make.
• You (eventually) learn how to deploy changes to a live environment with a minimum of disturbances for your users.
• Finally, the user experience needs to be intuitive because you don't have the option to force your users to read comprehensive manuals or attend training courses.

The main headache for us was the unpredictable availability and performance of the service. It was hosted by a small hosting company from which we bought capacity and we had no real control of the environment. It could suddenly go down without us being made aware of it by the hosting company. We should have hosted it ourselves, but were too small as a company to afford that investment at the time. I thing Google and many other SaaS providers are doing the right thing in this respect - they own and control the environments in which their SaaS applications are hosted.