Reality Check | Ephraim Schwartz | June 2007

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June 2007

June 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft upset over apparent death of immigration bill

I thought this alert sent by Microsoft to the media was worth posting. And if you believe this, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.

Statement by Pamela Passman,
Vice President, Global Corporate Affairs, Microsoft Corp
June 28, 2007

"WASHINGTON – Microsoft is disappointed that today's failure by the Senate to invoke cloture will likely result in the collapse of comprehensive immigration reform that is desperately needed to address the shortage of highly skilled talent.

This shortfall will limit American competitiveness and technological innovation, hampering not only the technology industry, but our country’s leadership in these critical areas.

The nation continues to witness a dramatic decline in the number of native born computer science graduates. As a result, technology companies like Microsoft rely on the H-1B visa and employment-based green card programs to deliver an adequate supply of highly qualified employees to help maintain our competitive position.

That can only be achieved through immediate reform of these programs to ensure they are meeting the needs of our economy. Despite today’s loss in the Senate, we commend Senators Cantwell and Kyl for their dedicated efforts to ensure the technology industry has access to the most highly skilled talent.

It is our hope that the Congress will prioritize finding a solution to these urgent issues before the end of the year.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 28, 2007 11:46 AM

June 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Senators open inquiry of L-1 visa program

In response to a bipartisan request by Senators Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services provided the names of all companies that use L-1 visas. Now Senators Grassley and Durbin are opening an inquiry into the program.

The full list is 354 pages long and starts with Tata Consultancy Services, which uses 4,887 visas, and drifts down to dozens of companies that use only one L-1.

Senators Grassley and Durbin expressed their concern that many of the top companies on the L-1 list also use H-1B visas, potentially indicating abuse of the program.

It is also worth noting that a number of the top 20 companies listed are major suppliers of offshoring and outsourcing services.

Here's an excerpt from Grassley and Durbin:

"The information provided today showed that many of the same companies identified as using the most H-1B visas were the same companies that used the most L visas. Under current law, employers can use the L visa program to evade restrictions on the H-1B program because it does not include protections for American workers. This demonstrates the need for additional checks on the L visa program."

I wrote about the problem with L-1 visas back in March 2006: "Homeland Security Probes L-1 Visa Abuses."

The column talked about the fact that the Department of Homeland Security issued a study the previous January on possible abuses of the L-1 visa program.

Here are some excerpts from that column.

"The program allows a foreign worker employed by a company overseas for at least one year to enter the United States temporarily, 'in order to continue to render his services to the same employer or a subsidiary or affiliate...in a capacity that is managerial, executive, or involves specialized knowledge.'

"According to Frank Robinson, CFO at Darwin Partners, insurance companies are bringing in foreign workers under L-1, providing food and lodging, but are paying the guest workers at the salary they were getting back home. If a typical programmer in the United States makes $60,000 to $80,000 per year, these workers are being paid as little as one-quarter of that. And they can stay as long as five to seven years.

"These workers may be employees of the insurance company; or worse, they could be employees of IT services companies, known as 'body shops,' who hire them out for a fee."

Here's one more excerpt from Grassley-Durbin.

"'This information certainly makes one wonder if companies are using the L visa to circumvent the worker protections required under the H-1B program. I'd like to know how many American workers these companies hire compared to the number of foreign workers they bring in,' Grassley said. 'American workers deserve the best chance at jobs in this country, and this data makes one question if they are too often overlooked.'"

Here is the list of the top 20 companies using the L visa.

Rank     Company       L-1 Visas in FY 2006
1       Tata Consultancy Services    4,887
2       Cognizant Tech Solutions    3,520
3       IBM Corp.    1,237
4       Satyam Computer Services    950
5       Wipro Limited    839
6       HCL America Inc.    511
7       Deloitte & Touche    512
8       Patni Computer Systems    440
9       Intel Corp.    394
10       Kanbay Inc.    329
11       Honeywell International    320
12       Hewlett-Packard Company    316
13       Infosys Technologies    294
14       Accenture LLP    291
15       Caritor Inc.    231
16       Schlumberger Tech. Corp.    214
17       Oracle USA    176
18       Syntel Ltd.    171
19       Pricewaterhousecoopers LLP    168
20       Microsoft Corp.    168

For a list of the top 20 H-1B users go here.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 27, 2007 01:30 PM

June 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Sprint talks turkey with mobile developers

The Mobile Application Platforms and OS conference held this week in San Francisco offered a unique opportunity to listen in on a conversation between the mobile platform designers and carriers and developers.

Unfortunately, not all of the speakers went beyond the usual canned presentation, but Jared Peterson, director, Sprint Application Developer Program, was one who did.

Peterson gave a frank talk on what the carriers expect from mobile application developers.

Peterson began his talk by reminding the audience that carriers first and foremost want to make money, but they also need to reduce churn,and improve user experience. Applications that can do that and at the same time support the carrier brand and strategy will be promoted.

From there, Peterson spoke frankly about standards and why carriers often find it necessary to offer proprietary solutions.

"Open standards have always been behind where we want to go," said Peterson.

In elaborating, Peterson said Sprint, and other carriers as well, have ideas that are not addressed by the standards bodies very quickly. The example he used was the lack of support for a flip phone where the screen must be addressed as an external device.

"There was no standard in Java that had the ability to work with an external screen for a flip phone," Peterson said, "so we had to look for a proprietary extension."

While Peterson admitted that if carriers try to dictate too closely what ISVs do it can stifle innovation, at the same time, carriers need to maintain a certain level of control, he said.

"Openness ends at security and privacy."

Peterson says the carriers role in delivering applications is to ensure that the application fits into the carrier's overall business and portfolio strategy, ensure that the application is well tested, and ensure that usability is consistent with the overall product experience.

However, he warned the developers sitting in the audience that they should not assume that any carrier will offer a great deal of support for their applications on their Web properties or on the Home Deck of the device unless the developer has entered into a close and formal partnership relationship with them.

Peterson sees the next three years as the "golden age" of mobile development where the ability to execute is finally catching up with the intent.

In other words, ideas pitched in, say, 2001 may have been great, but the technology wasn't really ready until now.

As witnessed by Apple's entry into the cell phone market, Peterson expects the next three years to see more and more large players come in, especially major media companies.

He reminded the audience that this shift means that developers will be dealing with people who know their market but do not understand the mobile market.

Advertising on mobile devices will also grow, Peterson said.

And finally, in April 2008, Sprint will roll out its first deployments of WiMax technology at speeds of two to four megabits per second.

Sprint owns just about all of the licensed spectrum that WiMax runs on. He said it is the company's attempt to get away from the economies of 3G technologies.

It will be a $3 billion investment in WiMax infrastructure, and it will give Sprint lower network and embedded costs.

"With WiMax, you have performance that will allow you to do a lot more with the browser space," he told the developers.

While there will be WiMax-enabled cell phones, the early devices will more likely be specialized data devices, said Peterson. WiMax will also crop up in laptops with WiMax data cards. Intel will incorporate a WiMax chipset embedded on the motherboard and combine Wi-Fi and WiMax into a single chipset over time.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 26, 2007 03:38 PM

June 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

iPhone JVM, Flash hacks could face Apple roadblock

Mobile operators took center stage this week in San Francisco (PDF file), talking very frankly at times with the audience, which consisted mainly of developers and snoopers like me.

I will tell all in later post about the presentations, which touched on everything from Sprint WiMax rollout next year and Microsoft explaining its "open operating system approach" to Symbian's near lock on the smart phone market worldwide.

But first, during the break I had to ask the presenters and attendees a question which probably annoyed them no end.

Question: "Do you think the iPhone can be hacked so that developers can put a Java Virtual Machine and or Flash capability on the device?"

The unanimous answer was, "doubtful."

The iPhone is targeted at Web developers, not mobile developers, said one developer attendee.

Jared Peterson, director for Sprint Application Developer Program, said Apple could in fact build into the system a way of preventing a Java VM from running on the iPhone, if they wanted.

Peterson also defended Apple to the extent that he said all the vendors say their platform is open to developers but "there are limits." He pointed out the goal of making sure a developer's application for location-based services doesn't impinge on privacy.

I also buttonholed a fellow from Visa, who told me he meets with all of the operators, device makers and operating system designers but hasn't met with Apple yet. That seemed to be the story with everyone at this conference.

Apple is playing it so close to the vest you might say they think they can go it alone, albeit, with the help of one small operator, AT&T.

I suspect, however, with the direction of mobile applications tilting heavily towards rich media content, Apple will have to change its tune (pardon the near pun) and open its infrastructure up if it wants to add more substantial content to its very glitzy packaging.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 26, 2007 02:33 PM

June 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

The art of e-discovery

With terminology in the FRCP left vague, companies need to create their own archiving strategy

There's a new buzzword and acronym to go with it, and if you haven't heard of ESI (Electronically Stored Information) yet, you'd best get up to speed.

ESI is born of changes brought about by the Federal Rules for Civil Procedure (FRCP), which went into effect on Dec. 1, 2006. I've written about FRCP several times, including an in-depth article on FRCP preparedness.

The problem is, ESI is more a term of art than a deliberately defined set of rules.

Ralph Losey, an attorney specializing in e-discovery at law firm Akerman Senterfitt, tells me ESI is not defined on purpose in order to cover future technologies that haven't been invented yet.

"We only change these rules every 50 year or so, so they deliberately make things vague," Losey says.

So vague in fact that a judge in Columbia Pictures Industries v. Bunnell ruled that content stored in RAM falls under the definition of ESI and is thus discoverable under FRCP.

When you probe a bit deeper into this case, it turns out the defense tried to get cute, Losey says. The defendant, TorrentSpy, was accused of being part of a conspiracy to allow users in a peer-to-peer network to use its site to find content and then violate copyrights by downloading that content. TorrentSpy did not offer the content, rather they were the search engine used to find it.

To prove its case, the plantiff had to show that TorrentSpy sent users to these sites. To do that the plaintiff wanted the log server information.

"Without the logs you cannot show a conspiracy to violate copyrights," Losey says.

The defense contended that saving the logs could not be done. But TorrentSpy didn’t fool the court. Losey blamed the inexpert expert IT witnesses the defense put on the stand for angering the judge.

"She [the judge] was smarter than everybody in the IT department," Losey told me. The defense made it look like retrieving the logs was impossible, and that simply is not true.

Since Dec. 1, there have been thousands of motions pertaining to e-discovery, so we can expect that definitions of what is and is not discoverable will be determined over time by case law.

You can find a complete discussion of e-discovery cases on Losey's blog. In two particular cases, an employer requested to obtain a mirror image of an employee's home computer. One judge, in Hedenburg v. Aramark American Food Services, ruled against the employer, saying it was just a fishing expedition; while the other, in Ameriwood v. Liberman, ruled in favor of the employer, saying the content on the home computer was relevant to the case.

Losey believes the new FRCP rules actually encourage inefficiency rather than efficiency in document archiving. He says this because in some court rulings if the defendant can show that the data is not easily accessible and that discovery will cost an inordinate amount of money there's a good chance that the judge might agree.

However, this can depend on how good your expert witnesses are. As I said in the case of Columbia v. Bunnel, it was the expert witnesses that angered the judge and helped determine her ruling on RAM.

The point is, even though the lack of specific rules may encourage inefficiency, Losey says it is probably too high a risk.

I invited Matt Smith, president of LiveOffice, a company that provides tools for archiving and retrieving Web content, e-mail, IMs, voice mail, and other ESI, to add his comments on the lack of definitive rules for e-discovery.

Smith says that, whereas an attorney might have advised a client not to archive content, with e-mail and other electronic data, there is both a sender and a receiver. That makes all the difference. Because of this, companies will be best served by being efficient in how they save content despite any hard and fast rules on what to save and not save and for how long.

"You need to have all the information you can in order to avoid shooting yourself in the foot," Smith says.

However, in some cases, discovery rules are quantified, such as in the financial services industry. Here the SEC requires that electronic documents be held for three to five years. If deemed relevant to the case, documents created in past three years must be retrievable within 48 hours.

That’s what LiveOffice does, and the secret is not to put in a system on the cheap, Smith says. Just because Smith has a vested interest in saying that doesn’t mean he isn't right. One must-have feature is real-time indexing, which can produce documents in short order rather than trying to field requests for e-mails from 20 different employees from three years ago and having to reindex the entire archive for each person.

Finally, I asked Losey, What is the biggest mistake companies make when devising their e-discovery strategy?

"In-house lawyers and IT people never have lunch together," Losey answered.

Not only do they often not understand each other, they often don't like each other. This is not good. Losey says they need to be close partners because each has to understand the needs of the other.

The FRCP may not be revised for another 50 years, but it looks like the courts and companies will need that time to figure it all out. Or as one office wag at InfoWorld suggested to me, "Why don't companies just cc: the Justice Department on every e-mail and get it over with."

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 26, 2007 03:00 AM

June 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Only the best get a company's best service

I filed a story today on Nexidia, a company that has technology to analyze the quality of spoken English, as well as other languages, in order to assess whether or not someone speaks with enough clarity to be understood in a customer service setting.

Originally called Accent Analyzer, the name was changed to Language Assessor.

In researching the article I spoke with an industry analyst, Elizabeth Herrell, at Forrester Research and what she told me just ticked me off.

Herrell said that there is a trend called "right shoring", or "best shoring", which only connects a company's premier customers to native speakers if and when they need help.

If, however, you are a lowly, small-fry customer, they send you to a customer support representative [CSR] off shore, where both you and the CSR may struggle over getting and being understood.

How cynical can it get? Whatever happened to being proud of your product, and that should include customer support? So proud that you don’t want to give anyone second best service?

This has to come under the heading of "how low can you go?" It also puts the lie to any company uses best shoring but claims its customers come first.

I would suggest before you purchase any big ticket item that may need help you should ask if the company does indeed use a "best shoring" strategy for their customer support.

If they do use right shoring, you might want to look elsewhere because if that's how they treat their customers I wouldn't be to sure of the quality of the rest of the product either.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 25, 2007 03:12 PM

June 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Why we lag in wireless

The article on the InfoWorld site today, U.S. lags behind other nations in broad-band speeds, is a common complaint I've heard for many years.

And if you really want to be aggravated, read this story on our site about what they are doing in Korea with WiMax.

I have always hear that Japan, Korea, and most of the Scandinavian countries are light years ahead of us in terms of quality of service and performance in wireless, particularly cell phone service.

I think much of this is simply due to the fact that for better or worse the wireless networks, i.e., the infrastructure, are unregulated.

In contrast, in most countries worldwide, the government dictates that everyone will use GSM, or in the case of Korea, CDMA, and so on.

There may be competition among service providers, but everyone is on the same page when it comes to the underlying technology.

It is obviously too late to do anything about it. And perhaps over time, wireless networks, like broadcast networks, will align behind a single technology.

Until that happens, there is not much you can do about it but move.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 25, 2007 02:49 PM

June 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Leopard and Vista: Last gasp of the big OS?

Twenty yeas from now a new generation of computer users will look back on the operating systems of today with the same bemused smile we look back at the cars of the late 1950s and early 60s. They had huge fins, were the size of a small yacht and burned up just about as much gas.

That's right, I'm comparing Apple OS X 10.5, or Leopard, and Microsoft's Windows Vista to those old behemoths -- big and flashy and totally unnecessary.

Instead our grandchildren will be using discreet, unobtrusive operating systems that will be invisible to the naked eye.

They will, if you want to think about it like this, almost be a return to the concept of a command line, only in this case they will respond to either a typed command or a voice command or perhaps a gesture to open, join, find, save or close a file.

Most likely they will be embedded in the system that you buy or in the network.

Operating systems that try to make a statement as today's crop of OSes do will look awfully foolish, and perhaps the users of these systems will also be ridiculed for using them (as if we had a choice). But imagine what you would think of the guy who in 1959 built an extension on to his garage in order to accommodate the length of his Cadillac.

The OS of the future will not, like the current crop of OSes, feel it is necessary to toot their own (car) horn. The truth is Leopard and Vista are not user-centric, but instead are ego-centric.

They are created by a massive team that is collectively trying to say, "mine is bigger than yours." Consider if you will who the team leader at the very top of each of these companies is and you'll see that I'm not that far off base.

In the future, however, the OS and the computer, will become a true utilitarian tool, just like other tools where form follows function not determines it.

Today, whether you look at the simplest tool like a hammer or a giant crane at a construction sight, tools in the analog world come with few, if any, frills.

There can be beauty in the spareness. And this I think will be the direction the next generation of operating systems will take.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 21, 2007 10:02 AM

June 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Court rules content of RAM memory is discoverable

In what some are calling a "rogue" decision, the Los Angeles District Court ruled on May 29, 2007, in Columbia Pictures Industries v. Bunnell, that data stored in a computer's Random Access Memory --that's correct you read it right, in its RAM -- is discoverable.

I've written about e-discovery and the revised Federal Rules for Civil Procedure (FRCP) that went into effect on December 1, 2007, but this case surprised just about everyone.

Columbia v. Bunnel is a copyright infringement case against TorrentSpy, described by some as a "media search-engine" Web site, described by others as a porn site. Whatever, that is not the issue here.

According to the blog posted by Ralph Losey, an attorney at the firm of Akerman Senterfitt, if the ruling is upheld by higher courts, it could require companies to archive and produce terabytes of data that would normally be expunged almost on a daily basis from a computer's RAM.

Up until now, the most stringent requirements, from the SEC, require financial services companies to make discoverable within 48 hours any relevant electronic messaging documents, in any format, going back three years.

As the blog points out, this ruling would require "a party to create computer records where none before existed."

I have no idea how a company can store content from RAM unless it is dumped either on the hard drive or put onto Flash. Imagine storing terabytes of data on pricey Flash?

TorrentSpy will obviously appeal this ruling. I'll track it and let you know what happens.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 20, 2007 03:47 PM

June 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Sun to revamp partner and channel strategy

With two profitable quarters in a row following five quarters of loses, the big question is can Sun sustain its growth, and if so, what will it be built on?

If the meeting I attended at Sun's offices in San Francisco are any indication, a lot of new growth is going to come from revamping its partner and channel program with a special emphasis on developing relationships with ISVs --in some cases startups -- that are on high technology's cutting edge.

Sun brought up Greenplum, an open-source database vendor for business intelligence and data warehousing, as an example of what it is trying to do.

Greenplum is built on PostgreSQL and is a far cry from early open-source database management systems.

Greenplum CEO Bill Cook says the company competes in a range of systems that can handle one terabyte to one petabyte of data. In fact, although neither Sun nor Greenplum would name names, they said a combined Sun-Greenplum data warehouse just won a major contract with a Blue Chip media company against Teradata.

"This is a half-petabyte system as a starting point," said Cook.

By working with younger companies, diamonds in the rough who can help businesses use technology as a competitive edge, Sun, under Jonathan Schwartz, is trying to recapture some of the technology glamor that it used to have.

At the same time, BI solutions like those from Greenplum give Sun the opportunity to develop new relationships on the business side of the enterprise rather than having relationships almost exclusively with the IT side.

Having an x64-bit OS doesn't hurt either and is opening a lot of doors for Sun with both the ISVs and customers.

Sun has 4,500 applications shipping on Sparc chips and 3,000 on the x64 platform.

Sun will be working with more companies like Greenplum, which went live last spring, to tightly integrate the hardware and software and then educate its channel partners so that they can sell it as a complete solution.

As of July 1, Sun is also drastically revamping its channel strategy, creating an SPA (Sun Partner Advantage) program. This makes sense considering that Sun does 70 percent of its business through the channel.

Although Cate said there is more to SPA than just reviewing the level of competency of its partners, that's how I see it.

As of July 1, there will be five partner levels based on how a partner performs and "operating expense dollars will be tiered to the level of partner achievements," said Cate.

Member Level is an entry level and is typified by partners that buy Sun systems off the Web site and resell them.

Associate Level requires a higher degree of commitment, and a partner at this level has access to all of Sun's products, usually specializes in certain solutions, and signs a partner contract with Sun.

Principal Level has tougher standards, says Cate, and a partner must show more competency about Sun products.

Finally there is Executive Level, which is exemplified by companies that have made "extraordinary" investments in Sun products, according to Cate, and they should understand all of Sun's technologies.

Sun's fiscal 4th quarter ends on June 30th, so we will have to wait until then to see if they can make it three successful quarters in a row.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 19, 2007 02:12 PM

June 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

IBM lends gravitas to Enterprise 2.0 trend

Leveraging Web 2.0 in the enterprise will mean transforming IT to fit a new paradigm of end-user needs

While far from being the first major enterprise software vendor to offer Web 2.0 capabilities, IBM today jumped into the game with both Big Blue feet, a move that will surely accelerate enterprise adoption of Web-based social software.

And when that happens, IT will have a lot to think about and do to ensure that Enterprise 2.0 delivers on its many promises.

IBM today announced three major collaboration and social networking applications under the heading of a Web 2.0 Goes to Work Initiative. The three applications are IBM Quickr 8.0, IBM Lotus Connections, and IBM Info 2.0.

IBM has been using the concept of collaboration and information sharing internally for the better part of a decade, according to Jeff Schick, vice president of social software at Big Blue. Schick tells me that seven years ago the company built employee profile capability within IBM -- called Blue Pages -- that support connecting people to people, people to information, and people to the extraprise.

With 6 million lookups per day, Blue Pages gives IBM employees access to co-worker's phone numbers, IM presence, and profiles -- which help them locate colleagues with a particular expertise.

This week IBM officially launches the commercial version of all this under Lotus Quickr, Lotus Connections, and Info 2.0. While the concept may have been around for 10 years, I'm certain the technologies IBM is using today are far different.

Quickr is team collaboration software, and Connections is a social-networking application in the vein of MySpace and FaceBook, but with an enterprise focus. The apps have a lot in common in terms of the technologies underneath.

Quickr allows users to share and organize content libraries, create online collaboration sites, and access libraries through plug-ins on their desktop applications.

Connections offers five capabilities, including profiles to find people with expertise in particular fields, communities to build team sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and something called Dogear, which is essentially a way to share bookmarks. Another feature called Activities allows users to monitor their work with a dashboard, share tasks, and establish best practices.

Finally, Info 2.0 is a mashup technology that gives users the ability to mix and match components from various applications to make new applications. The example IBM offers is a store manager tracking inventory shipments against weather reports from national weather advisories and then mapping that with Google for inventory management.

IBM tipped its hand about all this in January and this summer will be under a full head of Web 2.0 steam, shipping these applications by the end of June.

All of this could potentially have an impact on network traffic, bandwidth, and storage, but that is not the largest issue IT faces, according to David Cearley, lead analyst at Gartner.

The main challenge for IT will be delivering a set of end-user computing capabilities that best enable Web 2.0 for the enterprise.

Up until now, IT in the main has been focused on delivering e-mail and Microsoft Word to the desktop. But new tools will now be needed to seed the environment with the ability to build community. Yes, end-users will create, maintain, and drive those communities forward, but according to Cearley, IT will need to deliver a new set of capabilities to make that happen.

For example, there are a lot of tools for blogs and wikis. Differentiating the functionalities each offers will be vital as enterprise demand for these tools proliferates.

"Simply giving someone wiki capability doesn't mean anything," Cearley says. Rather, IT will have to identify how employees will use the functionality, paying particular attention to the types of communities they will want to build. IT will then have to examine a range of social software to determine the best fit.

Choosing a solution is one thing; getting end-users up to speed is quite another. If you recall back in the '80s companies actually had end-user computing departments that worked with people to show them how to use word processors and how to create applications with spreadsheets. Over time, the need for that kind of end-user support diminished.

Giving end-users the ability to create applications and mashups will likely mean a resurgence in the importance of having an adequate end-user support plan in place.

"It raises a whole new era of support requirements," Cearley tells me.

I have to confess I was part of the community that first ignored social networking, then laughed at it, then attacked it, and now, I guess I have to say I was wrong. It wins.

My advice is to skip a few stages and figure out how to accommodate social networking and collaboration into your IT architecture now. And if you can't, well, now that Big Blue is in the game, get out your checkbook; there's always IBM Global Technology Services.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 19, 2007 09:00 AM

June 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple bows to pressure and upgrades iPhone

Perhaps a day without Apple iPhone news was too much to bear for Apple's marketing department.

Therefore, Apple chose Monday, a week after Apple's original iPhone announcements at the WWDC07 (World Wide Developer Conference), to announce the phone "will deliver significantly longer battery life when it ships on June 29 than was originally estimated when iPhone was unveiled in January."

For details on the Safari/iPhone browser look here.

What is not clear from the announcement is whether Apple techies just underestimated the battery life or Apple decided to replace the original battery with a better one before it ships.

Perhaps Apple didn’t intend to spend the money at first and so opted for a cheaper battery, but following a lot of not-so-great press last week, marketing decided they had better recapture the positive press the iPhone first received back in January.

According to the newest release, the iPhone will get up to 8 hours of talk time, 6 hours of Internet use, 7 hours of video playback, or 24 hours of audio playback.

The word "or" is the telling hint. Does that mean we can put "or" in front of each one of those time estimates? Should we read it this way:

It can get up to 8 hours of talk time, OR 6 hours of Internet use, OR 7 hours of video playback.

The press release does not specify. Nor is there a direct relationship between each of these functions. So if you only talk 6 hours that doesn't mean you can tack 2 more hours on to Internet use.
Or, if I am watching a video on the Internet how does that break down?

Battery life is extremely difficult to quantify as anyone who has ever used a laptop, handheld, or cell phone knows.

In addition to the upgraded battery, the the touch screen surface is being upgrade from plastic to "optical-quality glass."

This will give users better scratch resistance and clarity. I would assume it will also be easier to clean off an oily surface from greasy index fingers.

Again, the reasons for the upgrade are not explained, and my guess is that Apple decided to take a little less in profit and offer the users a little bit more in quality.

Now who dare say the media doesn't serve a useful function? If publications decided to overlook Apple's deficiencies, my guess is they would never have offered an upgraded battery or top surface.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 18, 2007 01:27 PM

June 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Opera to replace Flash, iPhone has its first app

Opera Software officials confirmed today that it is developing native video functionality for its mobile browser that will replace the ubiquitous Adobe Flash plug-in.

"What we are doing is adding video capability directly into the Web browser so you can use text, and video, and javascript and directly execute video inside of the Web," said Tatsuki Tomita, senior vice president for consumer products at Opera Software.

Behind the move is a desire to increase the functionality of mobile Web browsers, according to Tomita. The Flash plug-in is extremely processor- and memory-intensive and on mobile devices, or any other hardware-constrained device such as even a set-top box, it is not an ideal solution.

"You cannot execute and provide a good user experience," Tomita said.

In addition, Flash requires more battery life than a native application.

Tomita includes the Apple iPhone as part of a long-term trend that will see more powerful browsers becoming the de facto operating system or environment on mobile devices.

Although not yet available, Apple already has its first application on the Web from Webware and a site for creating iPhone widgets from Widgity.

A move away from Flash and its expensive authoring tool could also lower developer costs, especially if over time an open source standard becomes available.

For example, a similar move was made years ago by most of the cell phone industry when it deployed SVG [Scalable Vector Graphics], an open W3C standard language for describing two-dimensional and graphical applications in XML in mobile browsers rather than using available proprietary solutions.

Tomita believes the browser will gain more and more functionality as the operating systems continues to move down the infrastructure food chain. Although there are limitations to applications built on top of a Web browser, they can be overcome if the browser providers work with individual handset manufacturers to control the hardware and middleware capabilities natively.

The combination will give browsers almost unlimited functionality and interactive capabilities, Tomita said.

Tomita would not put a date on when the Opera browser would replace Flash with its own technology.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 14, 2007 03:02 PM

June 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Bush, Kennedy aren't giving up on immigration legislation

For those who didn't believe me when I said the immigration bill wasn't dead, despite headlines to the contrary in all the major papers, well, today's headlines are quite different.

See "Bush and Kennedy talk compromise over Senate Immigration bill."
Here's an excerpt from that story filed to Axcess News.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) said, "Like the president, many of us are very determined to get the job done and get it done now." Kennedy is one the lead Democrats trying to push through immigration reform and may be key in negotiating compromise in order to win over enough Senate votes to pass the measure."

Anytime you see President Bush and Senator Kennedy practically hugging each other you know something is afoot.

Most of the focus of today's news is on reaching a compromise on the Z Visa, which would give those with illegal immigrant status a second chance at becoming a U.S. citizen.

However, while there is still lots of heat around this issue, if a compromise is reached over that, you can bet the H-1B visa increase will sail through as part of the bill with little opposition.

Stay tuned.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 12, 2007 02:05 PM

June 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple iPhone in the enterprise

The iPhone may help make a market for dual-mode devices, but the technology may not be ready for the market

No doubt the Apple iPhone will create a stir regarding the kind of services and applications dual-mode devices can deliver. But the success of dual-mode -- cellular plus Wi-Fi -- in the enterprise may depend on the willingness of cellular carriers to share their networks with Wi-Fi providers. One source tells me that both T-Mobile and Cingular, now AT&T, will drop any VoIP phone call originating from a handset if Skype is the service provider.

This kind of anticompetitive behavior won't last long, but at the moment, if true, it is worth considering, especially as carriers themselves begin dabbling in VoIP. T-Mobile, for one, is currently test-marketing its own VoIP service in Seattle.

If blocking VoIP calls sounds far-fetched, consider that Frank Hanzlik, managing director of the Wi-Fi Alliance, told me other carriers have VoIP capability but don’t want that fact known. He refused to mention which carriers.

Before standardizing on a dual-mode phone, enterprises should also consider the true ubiquity of the network. Uptime in airports and coffee shops is not the same as door-to-door coverage and would preclude using any serious business application on a dual-mode phone.

I spoke with Mohan Natarajan, vice president of engineering at Firetide, about this concern.

Firetide, and other mesh-networking companies, can greatly extend your Wi-Fi capabilities by deploying mesh nodes throughout a city. At present, Firetide has 3,000 nodes in a 50-square-mile section of Singapore, giving users 70Mbps access. Here in the States, however, mesh hasn't caught on, except in the public-safety sector, for which Firetide has deployed mesh networks in Dallas and Phoenix.

Wi-Fi traffic management also remains in its early stages. Wi-Fi Alliance's Hanzlik says resource management standards -- IEEE 802.11k and 802.11v -- are now under review and that nothing should be expected in terms of approvals before the end of 2008.

How to handle power output in a heavily trafficked Wi-Fi environment is the crux of the traffic management problem. Firetide's Natarajan compares the problem to having 10 pairs of people in a room all shouting at one another at once in order to be heard above the din. IEEE 802.11k and 802.11v will address this issue by modulating the power so that, as in our example, the 10 pairs of people learn to talk in an audible whisper and everyone gets heard.

Natarajan also says handset providers must make their devices more intelligent to help reduce network latency. Right now, network providers look into packets to identify whether they are streaming video, voice, or data. Enabling the devices to notify the network about the type of data being sent will cut down this latency and make for better SLAs.

Of course, there is also the ever-present problem of security, as the iPhone no doubt will mean yet another device with lots of storage capability being brought into the office without corporate oversight.

Companies need to create policies that prevent unauthorized personnel from connecting to the network, whether via a USB stick or Bluetooth, and downloading data, says Bob Egner, vice president of product management at Check Point, a pure-play security provider.

"The iPhone is just the tip of the iceberg," Egner says.

Luckily, the iPhone, like other handsets, identifies itself to the network, making it possible to enforce data upload and download policies. But that does nothing for the single most important vulnerability the enterprise faces when it comes to these kinds of devices: lost or stolen equipment.

"The greatest need is for encryption on these end points," Egner says.

Yet another unresolved issue facing enterprise adoption of dual-mode devices is the lack of a standardized handoff specification between cellular and Wi-Fi.

An IEEE study group is looking at handover issues. Currently, UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) defines the handover mechanism for GSM used by T-Mobile, British Telecom, and Orange. But there is a camp that favors SIP-based solutions, if for no other reason than they want it all IP-based.

The Apple iPhone will probably do one other thing for the handset market, and that is increase the capabilities of the display.

Apple decided not to take the mainstream path and is instead tapping LTPS (Low Temperature Polycrystal and Silicon) technology for its display.

Brandon Turk, project engineering manager at Coherent, which owns 80 percent of the LTPS market and provides this technology to Apple's display vendor, notes that LTPS has three qualities that make it superior to the more generally used Amorphous Silicon technology.

LTPS can reduce power consumption by more than 20 percent; it enables pixel densities surpassing 200 pixels per inch, giving users a brighter display, which is a challenge in the 1- to 5-inch form factor, Turk says; and LTPS gives a display designer flexibility in locating the integrated circuits and flexible printed circuit, which in turn allows for a thinner, larger form factor.

But if every handset manufacturer followed Apple's suit and shifted to LTPS, could an industry essentially owned by one manufacturer -- Coherent -- be able to handle it? Turk thinks so, but I doubt it.

I've covered display technology for years, and I can tell you there are always cyclical delays in that part of the industry, as screen form factors change in size and shape, let alone an increase in demand.

At the end of the day, the iPhone looks to be an exciting product with a great interface, but don't count on its dual-mode technology to change the way you do business. Not for a while anyway.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 12, 2007 03:00 AM

June 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Mac Leopard: Not enough to make PC users switch

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, took developers on a fly-by tour at the 50,000-foot level of Leopard, the next version of OS X. Leopard will ship in October.

For more details on Leopard and the keynote, go here.

Of the claimed 300 new features in Leopard, Jobs highlighted what I presume to be the top 10.

In addition, Jobs unveiled a version of Safari for the PC, running on Windows XP and Vista.

Jobs also announced a development environment for creating widgets on the iPhone, but that is the subject of a different blog.

Throughout the one-and-a-half-hour presentation, I fluctuated between thoughts that I was going to dump my junky, old PC and get a Mac because of all these cool new features and thoughts that said it is cool, it is fun, but is it necessary?

Well, it is a little bit of both.

Most of the improvements in the top 10 selected by Job and staff are really about making the interface easier to use.

The new desktop allows users to put up their own background with a simple click. A feature dubbed Stacks gives users a quicker way to view content inside their folders.

A dedicated folder for downloads cleans up the desktop environment, and you can launch an application from the download folder.

Finder has also been improved by allowing users to search for files and folders across their network. As long as you are a .Mac subscriber, the IP addresses of all your systems are known, and you can get into your work folders in case you're on the road and forgot an important file.

Again, the interface was improved with a List view, an icon view, and a new cover view that displays the software cover, sort of like iTunes CD covers.

From this view, you can also look inside to see what's stored there.

In typical Jobs style, he said, "It is an amazing way to find things. It turns out be super-useful."

Quick Looks is yet another UI improvement that allows users to instantly preview files without opening them, even in a full-screen mode.

Leopard is now a 64-bit OS top to bottom. Jobs demonstrated an application running on a system in 64-bit and 32-bit mode. Can you guess which was faster?

The main point being there was no need to have a separate 32-bit OS. I would have reversed that and said there is no need to have a separate 64-bit OS.

In the 64-bit version, the system did not have to go back and forth to the disk to retrieve data, which made it much faster.

Core Animation was another of the top 10, but I'm not sure I understood it well enough to explain. What I took away from it is that you can tag video and pictures to make searching easier.

OK, one step beyond an improved UI.

Boot Camp now runs Windows XP and Vista in VMware or Parallel.

Spaces, the UI one more time. It allows you to group files and folders together under an uber-Space. Big deal.

Dashboard was one of the more interesting new features. Jobs never said how it worked, more of that 50,000-foot level, or maybe he was even flying up to 75,000 feet with this one. But what it does is allow you to take any piece off any Web site and turn it into a widget on your desktop.

It seems to me this in a sense replaces an RSS feed. If I can click on a blog I like to read every day and drag it to my desktop and have it updated whenever the blog is updated, that sounds like an RSS feed to me.

Jobs took a piece of the Web site Rotten Tomatoes that reviews movies and turned it into a widget. Why couldn’t you do the same thing with a blog?

The improved iChat Theater was also very nice. Now you can put anything inside an iChat window and use it for collaboration, for displaying a presentation or a spreadsheet, or for showing off a new video.

Finally, Time Machine automatically backs up everything on your system and allows you to search by going back in time. It is very nice and much needed.

The other announcement Jobs made was that Safari is now available for the PC running XP or Vista. In his demonstration, it ran benchmarks twice as fast as IE and about 50 percent faster than Firefox.

That was it. Am I going to dump my PC in favor of a new Mac with Leopard?

The truth is, I still miss the simplicity of DOS and the fact that I knew how to fix things in it and change the config.sys file and the EXE file. Leopard is beautiful to look at, but I spend about 80 percent of my time writing on my PC. Do I need all of these new capabilities?

So far, I think not. They still only qualify as nice-to-haves and not must-haves.

As long as I can get my work done somewhat efficiently, I think I'll pass. At this point, I'm still waiting for that killer Mac capability that will make me switch.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 11, 2007 02:25 PM

June 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Is Jobs just like the wizard behind the curtain in Apple-Oz-land?

Monday, Steve Jobs took center stage, a place that he seems quite comfortable in, and gave a cheering crowd of 5,000 developers at the WWDC07 a not quite close-up look at the platform for developers who want to create applications for the iPhone.

Not a platform and far less than an SDK -- Jobs pointedly remarked that an SDK is not required -- the development environment will allow any third party to create Web 2.0 applications using current Internet standards.

As Jobs demonstrated it, a widget can access and incorporate the iPhone's built-in services inside a widget, including such services as placing a call, sending an e-mail, or displaying a location in Google Maps.

But my question is, is this really magic, or is it more like the Wizard of Oz standing behind the curtain making it look like magic? Only in this case, it is a Web server behind the curtain.

What I mean is, from where does the application actually execute? If it is a Web 2.0 application, then it is built on the server and accessed by the iPhone, but it is not an application residing on the iPhone. So what's the big deal?

For me, this makes it far less magical. It is a given that on a server using Internet standards, you can write anything you want. Then you can run it on a cell phone as long as you are cognizant of the small device's limitations.

Sure, you can access the services of the iPhone if you know how to talk to the application processor, the DSP (digital signal processing) chip, and the Wi-Fi chip inside the phone. Please call Intel for those details.

Writing applications for a small device, such as a cellular phone, with built-in Wi-Fi is a bit of an art and takes a great deal of technique.

Despite the fact that Jobs made it sound all so simple, I kind of think it isn't as easy as it looks, which developers who are not used to designing for small devices will quickly discover.

My advice: Don't promise your IT manager anything before you figure it all out.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 11, 2007 01:11 PM

June 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Experts: Immigration reform not dead

Despite rumors to the contrary, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill is not dead. It will most likely be revived in another format or come back in a version created in the House of Representatives.

Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at University of California at Davis, thinks the bill is dead but believes a separate bill dealing only with foreign tech works will be pushed forward.

"My guess is that they will now use the Lieberman/Hagel bill [Skilled Worker Immigration and Fairness Act of 2007] as a base and start adding even more industry-friendly amendments to it," Matloff told me.

This bill would raise the cap on H-1B visas.

As it stands now, the major change since I last wrote about the bill is the proposed Cantwell-Cornyn amendment.

The amendment would reinstate the rule that says you don't have to be degreed in a specific job area if you have equivalent work experience. This was eliminated in the current bill.

Matloff sees this as a minor issue.

The amendment also creates a dual system, reinstating the Green Card system that currently allows employers to sponsor workers with specific skills for specific jobs. The Amendment calls for 140,000 employer-sponsored cards in addition to the point system.

Finally, Cantwell-Cornyn seeks to reinstate H-1B exemptions for foreign workers who hold U.S. graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math, known as STEM employees.

Kim Berry, president of the Programmers Guild, says it is a bad idea.

"Why would employers hire new U.S. Bachelor of Science grads when the market would be flooded with workers with advanced degrees willing to work cheap in exchange for one of the 140,000 green card sponsorships?" Berry pondered.

Greg Siskind, an immigration attorney with Siskind Susser Bland, is in favor of reinstating a Green Card system that allows employers to specify jobs and employees. Siskind believes if this was completely replaced by the point system, it would be a disaster for the U.S. economy.

"While it may fit well in some countries, it would be disastrous for the U.S. System," Siskind said, explaining the point system was designed to attract bright people to a country.

"We don't have that problem," said Siskind. Rather, what the U.S. needs to do is to make sure we have the right kind of people gong to jobs that are needed and where they are needed.

Matloff and Berry disagree with Siskind.
Reinstating the green card on top of a point system expands the employer-based green card system even more than what the Immigration Reform bill would have done.

"This is totally unwarranted as we do not have a shortage of these workers," said Matloof.

Berry says employment-based sponsorship creates an indentured servant status on the sponsored workers.

As far as a shortage of qualified high-tech workers goes, Kim says American colleges and universities awarded 233,492 undergraduate science and engineering degrees.

Obviously, feelings on both sides are strong, which makes me believe this issue isn’t going away any time soon and that the immigration bill is not dead.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 8, 2007 02:43 PM

June 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Tata's Mexico move tackles time zones

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), one of the world's largest outsourcing firms, headquartered in Mumbai, India, announced that it will be opening up outsourcing facilities, a GDC (Global Delivery Center), in Guadalajara, Mexico, to serve the U.S. and Canadian business market.

While TCS already has 14 GDCs to serve the Latin American market, this is the first center to target the North American market.

Initially, TCS will hire about 500 programmers and software engineers in 2007.

According to a statement issued by TCS, setting up in a "similar time zone" to much of the U.S. will give them the ability to provide near-shore services.

While TCS made no mention of recent problems it and other India-based outsourcing firms are facing with a rapidly rising turnover rate due to competition for computer science graduates and programmers and the resulting increase in salaries, most industry experts say this played a large part in the TCS decision to open in Mexico.

In addition, the large disparity in time zones between the U.S. and India has always been a challenge that is difficult to overcome despite advanced global communications technology.

Add up the existence of 14 GDCs for the Latin American market, and the latest center to open in Mexico to serve the U.S. and Canadian market appears to indicate that the time zone differential plus the lack of on-site project management may be a deterrent to the future expansion of off-shoring as an outsourcing solution.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 7, 2007 11:21 AM

June 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

The real reason corporate America wants more H-1Bs

Let's take away the two strongest arguments from proponents and opponents of the H-1B visa program and see the reasons why a company might still prefer to hire employees under the H-1B visa program as opposed to U.S. citizens.

First the arguments.

Every CEO of every high-tech company is calling for an increase in H-1Bs. They claim there is a labor shortage and that in order to compete, they need to dramatically raise the H-1B cap. The latest call for more H-1Bs, for example, comes from a Google executive.

Professional organizations representing programmers and software engineers on the other hand say employers are just using the H-1B program to hire cheap foreign labor.

Let's take both arguments off the table.
What's left? If there was no labor shortage and salaries were exactly equivalent, would there still be such a hue and cry from the high tech C-level executives for an increase in the H-1B cap?

Yes, for the following reasons.

• Those H-1Bs who are contract workers employed by a job shop get all of their benefits, health care, sick leave, vacation, which is usually considered to be an additional 25 percent cost above the hourly wage, from the job shop, not from the company the H-1B visa holders are actually doing the work for.

• Many H-1B visa workers are here alone, without family, and are less likely during a typical work week to either arrive late due to babysitting and carpooling chores or require days off for family illness other family crises.

• H-1Bs take the corporate employer off the hook. They don’t have to pretend to care. If an H-1B visa employee turns out to have a drug or drinking problem or needs psychiatric services, the company just cuts them loose as opposed to a lifetime employee who becomes a so-called "part of the family" and must be sent to rehab at company expense.

The age of paternalistic companies that care deeply for their employees, if there ever was such an age, is over. High tech likes to use hired guns for all of the reasons above and more.

Sure, companies like Google make the work environment as pleasant as possible, but they have also learned the lesson well from companies like GM. They are non-union environments that can pull the rug out from under any benefit as soon as times get tough.

Out with the foosball, out with the massage and free lunch [as long as its eaten at your desk], and in with the question, "Working half a day?" when you leave at 6 o'clock.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 6, 2007 03:17 PM

June 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Schwarzenegger calls on Feds for more H-1Bs

In a letter to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called on Congress to issue more H-1B visas.

For more details on the current immigration bill in Congress see Immigration reform's high tech impact.

Schwarzenegger saved all of his concerns for employers and none for employees. I've highlighted the pertinent parts but here is the letter in full.

June 4, 2007
The Honorable Harry Reid The Honorable Mitch McConnell
Majority Leader Minority Leader
United States Senate United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510 Washington, DC 20510

Dear Majority Leader Reid and Senator McConnell,

I appreciate the efforts by President Bush and a bipartisan working group of Senators to successfully develop comprehensive immigration reform that strengthens our borders and reforms a system that is so clearly broken. As this debate continues, I would like to raise some urgent concerns for California, especially the needs of innovation-based industries that are the backbone of our economic competitiveness.

California's world-class higher education system and many of our leading industries benefit from foreign-born talent. The demand for skilled professionals with training in math, science and engineering far exceeds the supply of young people in the U.S. education system currently pursuing degrees in these areas. Improving the math and science education pipeline is one of our top priorities, but it will be years before we see the results of our efforts. The U.S. Department of Labor has projected that between 2004 and 2014 there will be nearly one million new jobs in math and computer sciences - the fastest growing professional sector in our economy. These highly-skilled workers are needed today to fill these jobs.

California's knowledge-based businesses are the most innovative in the world and have fueled much of our nation's economic growth over the past decades. From the birth of the personal computer, to today's mobile technologies, these sectors have changed how we all live. To remain globally competitive, these industries must have the skilled workers they need and be able to draw from a pool of foreign talent. Although I support the bill's effort to increase temporary H-1B visas it is critical that the annual level be based on the actual workforce needs of these sectors and not an arbitrary cap. The current caps of 65,000 for skilled professionals and 20,000 for holders of advanced degrees have proven to be far less than what is needed. Future levels for these visas must be based on the demands of the market or this policy will strangle these important industries, forcing them overseas. The H-1B program must also be enforced in a way that does not impose unnecessary, costly administrative burdens on law-abiding U.S. businesses. I am concerned that the current bill may make the H-1B program harder to administer, especially for smaller businesses, such as technology start-ups, and force these companies to consider moving critical functions, including product development, to facilities offshore.

My greatest concern, though, is with the proposal for a new points-based "green card" system designed to encourage the immigration of workers with training and skills in key areas. Replacing the current employer-based system, where companies can identify the specific skills needed and sponsor qualified immigrants, with an untested system run by the government threatens the very foundation of the program and must be amended. I strongly urge the Senate to retain an employment-based application process and consider authorizing a smaller points-based pilot program prior to any wider implementation.

I applaud your efforts to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform that secures our nation's borders while attempting to meet the unique demands of a vibrant and changing world economy. I urge you to carefully consider the critical issues that affect the burgeoning innovation economy in California, as this legislation moves forward. Thank you for your consideration of this request and for your willingness to take on this complex and challenging issue.

Sincerely,

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 5, 2007 05:05 PM

June 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google Apps and Salesforce integration only a matter of time

It is no longer a matter of if but when, as far as I am concerned.

That's how I feel about Google Apps being integrated into Salesforce.com after interviewing Kraig Swensrud, senior director of marketing at Salesforce.

[ Video: Salesforce and Google forge new alliance ]

This follows on the joint company announcement of a new alliance.

I asked Swensrud if he thought integrating Google Apps with Salesforce would be worthwhile. Here's his response:

"It would be worthwhile. Enough customers have pointed out the value of integrating Google Apps with Salesforce.

"Even now, we ship a number of contextual links, search, links, and maps. We include that, even today, more and more companies are storing more sales contracts as Google docs, and they can be linked directly to Salesforce.

"I find the idea of where we can take deeper integration with Google Apps intriguing.

"As an organization, we will be taking suggestions from customers from our Idea Exchange Web site. I will monitor that Web site to see which new features around Google integration do our customers want. And odds are we will focus our developer resources where folks tell us to focus our resource in regard to Google Apps."

As I said last week, when that happens, we are in for some big changes in the software marketplace.

Meanwhile, the new product announced on Tuesday, Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords, yes that's the full name, has one key feature that was not mentioned before today's live event.

Perhaps if it were announced, I would have been just a bit less harsh on them in my previous blog.

By integrating Google AdWords and Salesforce lead generation, a business can track back and discover where a lead came from. In other words, they can see what the last click was that got the user to their Web site.

This can be used to gain a better understanding of what marketing programs are working and which ones not. Very helpful.

I expect the next big announcement between the two companies to be about Google Apps and Salesforce but probably not before the first quarter of 2008.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 5, 2007 01:50 PM

June 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google, Salesforce miss the mark

Group Edition isn't the killer app the industry was hoping for

Is the Google-Salesforce announcement of a new, jointly developed application just smoke and mirrors, or is it the start of something big?

Certainly Group Edition, which combines Google's AdWords with Salesforce's CRM lead-generation feature, is not the big announcement we were all expecting when I wrote a blog last week, Google, Salesforce may make software history.

If there had been something nifty about how Group Edition replaces Team Edition, the entry-level CRM SaaS (software as a service) application for small businesses, there might cause for excitement. But I question whether there is anything new here at all.

Google AdWords, for the uninitiated, allows companies to buy the right to have their business linked with keyword searches. In other words, when someone searches on a keyword you have bought advertising rights to through AdWords, a link to your company's Web site will show alongside nonpaid results relevant to that particular search.

So now Google AdWords will be promoted in Group Edition. A user wanting to sign up can punch out from Group Edition to Google and sign up. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Let's say you take that step and a search for, say, baseball bats brings up the name of your sporting goods store and the user clicks on your link, it is still up to Salesforce to get that potential customer to fill out a lead form in order to identify himself. Typically a company can offer an incentive, a Webinar or perhaps a topic white paper, if the visitor fills out a name capture form. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The only difference now is that the Google AdWords stats can now be incorporated into the Salesforce lead-generation form, giving salespeople more data on the customer, such as how long they stayed on the site, what they looked at, and so on.

Because Google will give a small portion of its ad revenue to Salesforce if a Salesforce customer signs up for Google AdWords with no reciprocal revenue exchange on Salesforce's part, the immediate benefit goes to Salesforce. However, Google hopes that Salesforce will sell the heck out of the new co-designed site so that Google can garner an entirely new market for its AdWords product.

For my money, it doesn’t even qualify as a great mashup; rather, it is just an improved interface. One plus one still only equals two, with the only change coming from the fact that salespeople can now see all the data in one place.

Now consider that Google has about 900,000 AdWords customers, but most of them are very small companies paying pennies per keyword. While Salesforce is in fact courting the enterprise customer more and more, the majority of its 650,000 users are small businesses, too.

Yes, nickels and dimes add up, but SMBs don’t set the course for how companies do business in the future. That kind of leadership comes from the enterprise level.

Enterprise Applications Consulting lead analyst Josh Greenbaum says Google needs some kind of capability to team up with the enterprise.

"They don’t get where the key inflection points are," Greenbaum says.

For more of Greenbaum's take on Salesforce and Google, check out "The Salesforce/Google Killer App: Not coming anytime soon."

Naturally Google is trying to make more of what they are doing -- driving ad revenue to the bottom line. But that's not strategic. This announcement should have been about a killer alliance and a killer application for the enterprise.

Of course, both companies still have that opportunity, but the window won't stay open forever. They need to do something this year, or some new upstart may just come along and capture the imagination of big business.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 4, 2007 09:42 PM

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