Reality Check | Ephraim Schwartz | January 2008

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January 2008

January 30, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Demo08 says help desk is on the way with unique problem solving services

The dull but important and necessary category of help desks received its due at this year's Demo08 conference with a handful of companies offering some new twists to the old problem of customer service.

To my mind, the most innovative help desk solution came from SupportSpace that leverages an online community of experts with skills in multiple high tech technologies to solve an end user's PC problems.

This help desk marketplace service has a nice interface that gives a user in need of help pictures of the tech experts, lists the skills they claim to have, their fee structure plus an unedited review and ratings section from others who have used the experts' services.

It also gives the tech expert the ability to post a short
self-promotion blurb, such as "no problem is too big or too small."

Users can also search by skill category such as printer troubleshooting or Internet login difficulties, and when they find someone they like they can start a conversation with an IM chat or phone call.

Support.com's PC Health Check uses its diagnostic tool set to let users know when it is time to call for help.

Users download the Health Check application and install it locally.

The software then checks the system configuration, looks for possible updates, and then scans the PC, looking at hardware, software installed and the overall performance of the PC.

Health Check generates a non-jargon, plain English report that rates and places performance, security and hardware into such categories as non-optimal or optimal.

If a system is rated non-optimal users have a choice of scrolling down to review any of 55 different ways to self-tune the system.

For example, the scan may have discovered that there are 1100 files in cache and eliminating those files would free up 80MB of space.

If users prefer not to do it themselves a phone call allows a Support.com technician to take over and optimize the system.

Pathworks Software Helpstream service is not unlike SupportSpace in that it takes in part a community and collaborative approach to customer service.

The application is targeted at any company that offers a product and that fields a customer service center.

Users can ask the community of users a question, open up a knowledge base, or submit a problem as a help desk query and be assigned a trouble ticket.

In the future, the service will also create a wiki platform for collaboration as a way to update community responses to problems.

Aternity, part of the Intel Capital investment portfolio, uses business intelligence, called the Performance Intelligence Platform, to do performance monitoring and troubleshooting.

The platform creates baseline performance profiles and then matches user desktops to the baseline.

If a system is below baseline an alert is sent. The system then isolates affected users and sends a troubleticket.

IT receives an email notification that a problem is occurring and an update to the user is also sent when the problem has been identified.

The Platform uses all of the common attributes of the impacted group in order to identify when the problem started, what applications are affected and which users are affected.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 30, 2008 12:16 PM

January 30, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Citrix introduces VMware rival for desktop virtualization

Citrix Systems chose Demo08 to launch XenDesktop, a desktop virtualization datacenter application.

Using Xen Desktop software will allow IT managers to provision hundreds of end points with memory and storage.

Deploying the virtual desktop is a three-stage process: IT selects the operating system, inputs the name of the end user and assigns memory and storage depending on the what applications the end user will be using.

Although the desktop is being piped down to an end point--typically not a full desktop but rather what was once called a thin client--in the demonstration rich media pages were running on the virtual desktop as fast as if the media was local.

Xen Desktop allows users to personalize their desktop as if it was local, including using personal own screen savers.

Data residing on a USB flash drive connected to the end point can also be accessed as if it were local.

While the idea of using dumb terminals and having all the applications and operating system reside back in the datacenter is not new, what Citrix promises is unprecedented performance, equal to or better than a standalone desktop, plus ease of deployment and management for IT.

Another boost to the idea of virtual desktops comes from Microsoft which last week announced a 70 percent reduction in the licensing fee. A virtual desktop license for either XP or Vista was dropped from $78 per seat to $23 per seat.

The idea of virtualization was also demonstrated by StackSafe's Test Center which claims to put an end to IT's typical "patch and prey" operating mode, said Loren Burnett, president and CEO.

StackSafe Test Center creates a virtualized copy of the corporate Web infrastructure and runs a readiness test to see if the infrastructure runs properly after a patch is deployed.

If the patch or application enhancement has a negative impact on the virtual infrastructure an error message is sent. All tests provide details to find the source of the problem.

Other tests in the virtual infrastructure include tests for reliability, performance, configuration and security.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 30, 2008 09:14 AM

January 29, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Demo08 goes green with a universal power supply and green Web site

In keeping with the times, Chris Shipley the director of Demo08 conference selected a two companies, GreenPlug and Celsias, around which to create the first DemoGreen portion of the conference.

Having been around high tech for over 20 years, GreenPlug takes me back to the old days when hardware was king of the industry.

GreenPlug is nothing short of a universal power adapter. If adopted by the major consumer electronics and high tech device manufacturers users will have only one power supply to plug their multiple devices into.

While it will certainly cut down on what needs to be packed as you travel to your next event the real benefit comes from having fewer devices destined for the landfill as each device the power supply was designed for becomes obsolete.

GreenPlug developed a universal power supply chip which the company hopes will be adopted by computer OEMs and other electronic hardware manufacturers with the promise that GreenPlug will give away the client software that accesses the power supply units.

In the demonstration, Frank Paniagua, CEO and founder, plugged various devices with various voltage demands in and out of power supply. Each time Paniagua changed devices the software recognized the voltage needs and supplied the device with the proper amount of power. When the device was unplugged the power supply cut power to the port.

The second green startup is Celsias and it is a collaborative site or meeting place for green minded companies and individuals to work together on current projects associated with environmental issues.

For example, an oil spill might cause the creation of an ad hoc project of leaders and volunteers who want to help with the clean up.

The home page contains a blog site, 1500 articles on climate change, as well as displaying existing projects, allowing users to search for projects or to create new projects.

As part of its business model in the future it will allow companies to sell sustainable products.

Currently there are 82 projects on the site.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 29, 2008 04:03 PM

January 29, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Demo08 demonstrates that traditional carriers are doomed

This year's Demo brought to light a telecommunications trend that must have the major carriers shaking in their boots.

Simply put thanks to Web 2.0 and IP telephony, innovative startups are discovering they can create their own phone company and they don't really need the tradtional carriers to do it.

In the late morning sessions of Demo08 this was demonstrated by two companies Toktumi and Ribbit.

Toktumi gives companies downloadable software tools that can be used with either a headset plugged into the PC or with an attached handset to the PC if that interface is more comfortable.

Once the software is downloaded a company is given a free phone number that includes voice mail, call forwarding, and voice conferencing among its many features.

If a company decides they like what they hear the free service is upgraded for $12.95 per month plus 2 cents per minutes.

When a call comes in users get the typical VoIP features such as called ID, call transfer, or an instant voice conference call setup.

The system also lets users dial by name or location search.

Ribbit, meanwhile, calls itself the first phone company to emerge from Silicon Valley. It creates Web telephony solutions that merge and integrate mobile phone communications with Web-based social networking.

A voiceware application offers what it calls a personal communications service, Ribit Amphibian.

Allowing the computer to answer a mobile phone call, once registered with Ribit users can answer their mobile phone from a Web page or any desktop.

The Web page acts as the telephone. This is a true Web 2.0 application with no downloads. It is simply an extension of the mobile phone number.

Unlike a mobile phone voice mail, Ribit also has speech to text to convert messages to text.

What is the most unusual part of the solution is Web 2.0 Caller ID.

While a user talks to a caller on the phone, the system goes out and searches for more information on the person, looking into social feeds and Web sites.

Ribit has an open API allowing developers to create applications on top of the platform.

At the conference the executives demonstrated an iPhone interface for phone calls and a chalkboard interface that allows users to chalk in a cell phone and then erase it after its use. Very cool.

Both Ribit and Tokumi are only the beginning but I think, to use a word from the pre-bubble bursting days, they threaten to in a very serious way disintermediate the giants of the telecommunications industry.

The carriers may fight back with partners by handing innovative services over to third parties but at the end of the day, applications like Ribit and Tokumi will demonstrate to users that they are not needed.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 29, 2008 11:10 AM

January 29, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Demo 08 sees wikis, translation and sales tools unveiled

This year's Demo08 conference in Palm Desert, Calif., got off to an unusually eclectic start. Typically, demonstrators are organized around categories like mobile, email, social networking and the like.

Not this year. Each of the first dozen or so presenters were unrelated in terms of category to one another.

Before I give you the highlights from the first set of demonstrators let me tell those who don’t know what Demo is all about.

Demo has mostly startups, 77 this year, who are looking for investment dollars. So the audience is filled with, you guessed it, VCs and executives from the investment arm from most of the major high tech companies.

CitiPort was the highlight of the early morning demonstrators as far as I was concerned. It is wiki meets travel information.

This travel service allows locals who know a city best to contribute information on restaurants, places of interest that a typical traveler may not know about but a city local does.

In addition, the information can be organized by location. So if you decide to go to a museum first you click add and the graphic of the museum is added to your itinerary. It will then show you what other points of interest are near by.

If you click on restaurants for lunch, for example, it will show you local recommendations keyed to eateries that are close by.

A very neat and very useful tool that I think will get both millions of hits with longevity of views that will make CitiPort a success.

It may not be related to traveling but making appointments both local and long distance, via Web conference or telephone conversations is what TimeTrade Systems technology is all about.

Sales people know that the easier you make it for your customer the better chance you have to sell them something. So, instead of a going through the painful process of multiple back and forth emails in order to find a mutually agreeable time for an appointment, TimeTrade embeds a schedule button in email to ease the pain of making appointments.

Iterasi has nothing to do with travel or appointment making except for those of you who consider Web browsing as traveling.

Iterasi allows users to save any Web site page.

It is the equivalent to a typical page capture or print screen only this is for Web pages.

What makes it better than saving favorite sites is that it actually takes you to the page you want to get to rather than the home page of the Web site.

It also allows users to tag the page, take notes and then do searches on tags, words used on page or by date of the save.

SpeakLike offers yet another attempt at translation software for those who talk to business associates worldwide from the comfort of their desk chair and instant messaging.

It is a hybrid that uses both machine translation and human intervention, when required, to make an IM conversation completely understandable.

The human assist is especially handy when idoms and slang words are used by one of the IMers.

Stay tuned and I'll be blogging on more demonstrators after the next batch comes on stage.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 29, 2008 08:06 AM

January 29, 2008 | Comments: (0)

SaaS means business-to-business

Software as a service's ability to establish hubs for b-to-b data integration is winning over large and small converts alike

For the most part, SaaS (software as a service) has been an evolutionary tale, one that offered quick wins to smaller players at the outset in hopes of eventually appealing to midsize companies and, ultimately, large organizations.

But one market in particular -- EDI between suppliers and buyers -- has already seen some very large players converting to SaaS, as Bell Brands, Welch's, Arena Brands, and Target are tapping its ability to establish a hub for business-to-business data integration.

To be sure, SaaS enables smaller suppliers to meet the integration demands of big customers such as Bell and Target without having to commit the IT and budget resources necessary to perform EDI in-house or via a managed solution. But SaaS-based b-to-b data integration goes beyond that.

Jim Frome, chief strategy officer at SPS Commerce, lays out the typical challenge for a supplier dealing with a company such as Target.

Target publishes a set of rule books that specify the business processes, workflow, and points of integration that a supplier must comply with fulfilling an order Target has placed.

EDI is the traditional solution that suppliers use to map their processes to a customer's requirements –- a.k.a. its rule books.

These rule books are not trivial.

“Rule books are three, four, even five inches thick, and there are multiple rule books, one for shipping to a distribution center, one for shipping to a home address, another for shipping from a foreign port,” Frome says. The list goes on, he adds.

Obviously, adhering to the rules is well worth the trouble if your buyer is as big as Target. And if you had only Target as a customer, it wouldn’t be so bad. But say you have a dozen customers, each with its own sets of rule books. EDI comes at a price, both literally and figuratively.

Companies either develop in-house IT expertise, most likely requiring a full-time staff, to create and manage the various interfaces with dozens of customers, or they go the route of a managed service that takes care of EDI for the company. Neither solution is cheap, nor is it likely to keep up with the constant flow of changes made by customers in a highly competitive marketplace such as CPG (consumer packaged goods).

Another trend driving suppliers to seek an easier way to perform EDI is their penchant for outsourcing. And not just IT. We're talking outsourcing just about everything they do: manufacturing, inventory control, logistics, freight forwarding, and more.

All this outsourcing is making supply-chain management that much more complex. It also means that the entities performing the bulk of the work for the supplier have to act on the supplier's behalf when the customer wants answers or changes.

The on-demand SaaS model enables these entities to respond on behalf of suppliers in a timely manner, whether they are located in the United States or Asia. So how does SaaS do that?

Well, a company such as SPS Commerce creates what the industry calls a Trading Partner Integration Center. Instead of a supplier having to reinvent the wheel -- the data integration code and mappings -- for each customer, the TPIC's multitenant SaaS architecture already has connection points to most of the major retailers in, for example, CPG.

When the customer, Target, changes a business rule, each supplier is quickly mapped and in compliance with the new rules.

As Frome says, without SaaS, you find that each supplier’s IT staff has the same maps as other suppliers’ IT staffs. Very redundant, I would say.

Now, using SaaS, the maps are probably more reliable too because they have been, as Frome says, battle-tested and debugged by thousands of suppliers on a daily basis. Obviously, multitenancy also costs less as the TPIC leverages its solution to many customers and gains economy of scale.

Strangely enough, although suppliers are those most in need of a solution like this, it is the customers -- Target, Welch's, and so on -- that are actually buying into the solution. After all, when a supplier doesn’t get it right, the retailer suffers, too.

The more I cover SaaS as a reporter, the more respect I gain for the model, and the more I believe that in just a few more years it will become the entrenched incumbent waiting for some new upstart methodology to unseat it.

It should be an interesting process to watch.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 29, 2008 03:00 AM

January 22, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Bomb sniffing laptops and radiation detectors in your cell phone

The news out of Purdue University that they are developing sensors which fit inside a cell phone that can detect radiation, and thus perhaps stop the detonation of a nuclear bomb by terrorists is a bit outlandish to my way of thinking.

"It is meant to be small, cheap and eventually built into laptops, personal digital assistants and cell phones," says the press release.

The idea is that the more people armed with radiation detectors the better chance we have of getting a terrorist before they detonate a device.

"We are asking the public to push for this," said Andrew Longman, the system developer.

The system is capable of detecting a weak radiation source 15 feet from the sensors.

My bet is that like me, law enforcement agencies will think the idea is unworkable because of the number of false alarms these detectors will generate on a daily basis. The alarms will be so great that eventually the alerts will be ignored.

I can imagine a crowd of angry citizens surrounding some poor soul, shaking their cell phones at him only because he happens to wearing an antique watch with a radium dial.

In fact, don't most devices give off some amount of radiation, including television sets and PCs?

What’s next, bomb sniffing laptops?

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 22, 2008 01:09 PM

January 22, 2008 | Comments: (0)

WiMax multi-hops to hyperconnectivity

Technical advances keep expanding the horizon for WiMax -- if only carriers could get down to delivering on its promise

While two key WiMax spectrum owners, Sprint and Clearwire, haggle over bringing broadband wireless to the masses, thanks to companies like Nortel the technology itself continues to evolve in a worthwhile way.

Eventually, the spectrum players will sort out their differences -- after all, WiMax means money in everybody's pocket. In the meantime, wireless users can salivate over what the next generation of WiMax, 802.16m, will bring.

To put 802.16m into perspective, I spoke with Nortel Fellow Wen Tong, leader of advanced research in wireless technology at Nortel, and the holder of dozens of wireless patents. Wen produced the industry's first 348Kbps 3G pre-standard over-the-air prototype and was one of the inventors of the turbo-coding interleaver, a key 3G technology that made transmission over the air more robust. This technology was subsequently adopted by both the 3GPP and 3GPP2 standards groups.

One of the most exciting changes that will come about as WiMax evolves over the next several years is hyperconnectivity -- "what we at Nortel define as the state in which the number of devices, nodes, and applications connected to the network far exceeds the number of people using the network," Wen says.

To understand what that is, think of it this way: Right now telecommunications companies measure connectivity on a per-head basis, Wen tells me. "One head, one phone."

In the future, hyperconnectivity will mean multiple devices with multiple connections, video, phone, IM, and m-to-m (machine-to-machine) connectivity -- the last of which will bring that long-sought lights-out datacenter that IT pros have been talking about for years.

Performance will be around 1Gbps for fixed wireless and 100Mbps for mobile.

But enough about the future. I asked Wen to take us through the steps we need to take to get there.

Today's cell-phone towers are separated by about a kilometer. Because they sit on a lower frequency, that distance is sufficient.

But WiMax will find a home at a higher band, 2.5Mhz. At that frequency, network providers will need more sites.

IEEE 802.16m will resolve the problem. For your information, .16m will replace the current standard, .16e, but not for at least two years. And as always, the standard won't be fully enabled out of the gates. Once the standard is in place, it takes several years to optimize it.

IEEE 802.16m brings a couple of major and fundamental improvements to WiMax that within the next five years will lead us to hyperconnectivity.

No. 1, .16m provides twice the spectrum efficiency of .16e, meaning more data can be pushed through the same hardware configuration. Not the same hardware, mind you, but the same configuration, meaning that retooling isn't required when deploying the technology.

To quantify the performance difference, Wen explains that WiMax is currently capable of delivering 1.2 bits per hertz, per second per sector -- meaning that a 10-megahertz sector bandwidth will deliver 12Mbps.

Double the efficiency to 2.4 bits per hertz, per second per sector, and you will get about 24Mbps.

The second fundamental change in technology brings a huge improvement in voice quality for VoIP users -- and a business benefit for carriers as well.

Using the cellular grid means that the closer you are to the cell tower, the better your performance. And the farther you are, well, the more out of luck you will be in getting a signal.

Rather than require additional towers to fill the gaps, 802.16m will tap "multi-hop technology," deploying small, Wi-Fi-like nodes in between cell towers where WiMax antennas reside. The signal will then hop across each node, a capability that will be integrated into .16m devices.

This capability will "unify the data rates across the nation," Wen says, without having to increase the grid.

The technology will require AC or battery power, but backhaul and network support will not be required.

"It is an intelligent digital repeater to help packets multi-hop," Wen told me.

For those of you, like me, who want to call this mesh, it is not, says Wen.

Mesh is peer-to-peer. In this configuration, a cell tower is still needed as the gateway to the network.

Once this technology is deployed, carriers will be able to support more voice conversations per sector.

"If you can't grab more voice," Wen says, "you would have better quality on each call."

But it will more likely be a combination of the two -- more conversations, better quality.

Today, 5MHz of spectrum can support 60 to 70 voice calls. With multi-hop, that same band could support 3 times that capacity.

This is the kind of capacity that can truly provision VoIP as the standard way to carry voice without dropped calls, static, and all the other annoying attributes VoIP currently carries with it.

When we get to IEEE 802.16m, wireless will truly be an integral part of our consumer and business world. And if you consider the fact that in 20 short years wireless has become the communication method of choice for more than half the world's population, further advancements in this area will go a long way toward eliminating the digital divide.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 22, 2008 03:00 AM

January 17, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Oracle buys BEA for $8.5 billion: will that be cash, check or charge?

As enterprise application consolidation continues and the big fish continue to gobble up the slightly smaller fish I’m wondering whether or not these companies are playing with monopoly money? Or is it real to them?

Oracle is about to spend $8.5 billion to acquire BEA but no one thinks it is worth talking about the financial consequences of this move.

That amount of money can’t be insignificant. Yet not one analyst I spoke with in covering this story seemed to think it was worthy of consideration.

How is Oracle going to pay for this? Will it be cash, check or charge?

What are the consequences for Oracle? What if the integration effort fails and they don't get their money back so to speak?

What if we have a big recession and sales slow down to the extent that Oracle starts losing money? Did they, or anyone else consider this?

On the other side I would like to know who at BEA gets very rich, very quickly.

Someone once said in business you never use your own money. You borrow it from somebody else.

Is that the case here?

As an interesting sidelight, I wonder if the U.S. financial institutions now going hat in hand to the big banks in Asia and the oil sheiks in the Middle East to bail them out of the sub-prime lending mess, are really in need of the money or is this a case of just using OPM [Other People’s Money]?

Maybe for all the criticism these U.S. banks are taking they are laughing behind closed doors.

Any financial analysts out there care to weigh in on either the Oracle question or the sub-prime issue?

Please respond in the comments section.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 17, 2008 08:16 AM

January 15, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Collaboration: Bandwidth killer

Heed the call to collaborate -- but don't let bandwidth-hungry collaborative apps grind your network to a halt

As creators of collaborative software spew out application after application, other ISVs are quickly following up with what you might call the antidote -- software designed to prevent a tidal wave of collaborative programs from overwhelming corporate networks.

Take Avistar Communications, FaceTime Communications, and Permessa, for example. Each ISV offers software to regulate collaborative applications and manage the bandwidth they require.

FaceTime is tracking more than 600 collaborative applications in 11 different "greynet" categories. When used in the office, these greynets can become entry points for viruses, spyware, keyloggers, botnets, and Trojan software.

These greynets include:

• Annonymizers
• Gaming software
• IM
• IPTV
• Multimedia (iTunes, Windows Media Player, and so on)
• Peer-to-peer programs
• Remote admin tools
• Social networks
• VoIP
• Web-based IM
• Webconferencing

For those unfamiliar with Annonymizers, these applications circumvent controls -- typically Web filtering -- put in place to prevent access to unauthorized Web sites.

Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing and product management at FaceTime, says the company's solution gives network admins better visibility into what's on the network at any given time. The tool, RT (Real Time) Discover, identifies all IM, p-to-p, and Web traffic on a network and can be run off a DVD on a laptop.

FaceTime's Unified Security Gateway is an appliance IT managers can use to enforce policies on all greynets.

"Most IT people are shocked," Cabri told me, at the amount of unauthorized network traffic. RT Discover finds it and breaks it down by category.

There might be eight to 10 IM applications alone that the admin thought were locked down. In 2007, FaceTime tracked 1,088 IM and p-to-p incidents. Of those threats, 19 percent were over AOL IM, 45 percent over MSN Messenger, 20 percent over Yahoo IM, and 15 percent on all other IM networks.

Avistar's approach differs, in that it has injected control mechanisms into its own voice and video communications solution.

Avistar CEO Simon Moss believes that by putting intelligence -- a set of algorithms -- inside the application, you can potentially eliminate the need to buy more bandwidth. Avistar's algorithms identify available bandwidth and determine how much is being used by voice and video.

"At some point, when you hit capacity, the management component allows an administrator to throttle down bandwidth for all users, revert video to audio only, or give a user a busy signal -- meaning the user can't get on the network at that moment in time," said Avistar CTO Chris Lauwers.

One thing is certain, bandwidth use is not being reduced. Avistar, for example, just put in a 2,000-seat deployment for its desktop video application. The installation was paid for by eliminating much of the air travel between New York, London, and Frankfurt.

Permessa takes yet another approach. Its application sits on the mail server and controls the traffic as it is created.

Permessa has been managing enterprise collaborative applications for 15 years, mainly e-mail. But Permessa CEO Stefan Mehlhorn gave me a bit of a scoop when he told me the company will be expanding to include IM management and beyond, and that it will incorporate best practices garnered from its own collaboration efforts to help companies create management models and templates.

Provisioning bandwidth is a pain, sucking up a lot of time and money. Yet the call for collaboration keeps the network bandwidth-hungry. Companies such as Avistar, FaceTime, and Permessa offer the kinds of tools to help your organization work together without putting undue strain on network resources.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 15, 2008 03:00 AM

January 14, 2008 | Comments: (0)

IBM to deploy Banking Center of Excellence in Hanoi

For someone my age the news that IBM is building a Banking Center of Excellence in Hanoi is like a splash of cold water in the face.

The largest, most powerful capitalist nation in the world fought a war to stop the threat of Communism and now IBM and Hanoi, a company and a capitol city respectively that are emblematic of both, are as close as two peas in a pod.

Life is strange.

A center of excellence, according to Boxley Llewellyn, director of growth initiatives for banking and financial markets at IBM, is a team IBM creates from its hardware, software and services experts in a particular discipline, in this case finance.

You can imagine because Vietnam was in one war or another for over 20 years its high tech infrastructure is up until recently almost non-existent.

The good news for Vietnam is that because they have to start from scratch they can easily start with the latest technology.

IBM will build its Banking Center of Excellence on top of IBM mainframe System z, DB2, WebSphere, Tivoli and an SOA platform.

Some economists have said that the post-war rise of Germany and Japan as economic powerhouses was in fact due to a similar set of circumstances. Having their infrastructure bombed to rubble forced these two countries to rebuild.

So while the winners were stuck with legacy manufacturing systems and factories Germany and Japan started with a far more modern base.
The result is that both countries are strong competitors.

While Vietnam is minuscule in terms of population and size compared to say China, Boxley believes that with a modern high tech infrastructure, Vietnam can become a world class competitor if they pick their target markets right.

"They have the opportunity to specialize. To build in a certain corporate area," Boxley told me.

Look for them to focus on the consumer need for efficient banking which they will develop for their own growing middle class and then, taking advantage of the deployment of the newest technology, market that expertise into other locations beyond their own borders, says Boxley.

What is wonderful about technology is that it knows no boundaries and it usually succeeds on its own merits, that’s something that can’t be said for countries in general or politicians in particular who usually get us into the messes that take us so long to recover from.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 14, 2008 12:16 PM

January 10, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Antitrust lawyer explains the ins and outs ot the NY AG antitrust investigation of Intel

With the breaking news that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating Intel for violations of state and federal antitrust laws, I sat down with John Peirce, an expert in domestic and foreign antitrust law and a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Bryan Cave LLP.

What follows is that conversation in which Peirce gives his take on what prompted the New York AG to begin his investigation and how far Peirce thinks it will go.

ES: Do you think this investigation was inspired by the on going EU [European Union] investigation into Intel’s business practices?

JP: The EU investigation has been going on for six years. It has now asked Intel to make a formal response, something they call a "statement of objections" to the allegations.

Cuomo sees that the EU has gotten some traction with their investigation and so he may have decided that for the benefit of New York consumers he would look into the charges.

Also, the Wall Street Journal carried an article today that said AMD is building a $3 billion plant in New York. It is perfectly logical for AMD as a prospective taxpayer to go to the AG and say something is wrong with Intel’s business practices.

ES: What exactly is Cuomo and the EU investigating?

JP: The EU is looking into whether or not Intel is locking up all customers [PC manufacturers] with exclusive arrangements that state they won’t buy any AMD products.

The EU is also investigating whether or not Intel is using predatory pricing, selling chips below cost as an unfair competitive advantage.

ES: Is that illegal?

JP: In this country exclusive arrangements are common. It has to be something exceptionally harmful that prevent competitors from getting a toehold in the market.

It is a hard case to prove in U.S. but in the EU it is easier to prove.

ES: What’s necessary to prove that exclusive arrangements have violated U.S. anti-trust law?

JP: The easy part is to show that there was an exclusive arrangement. It is probably contractual. The hard part is to prove that there are so many of these in place that it is starting to look like a monopoly.

ES: So what is the New York AG’s next step?

JP: To continue his investigation. He doesn’t need the courts permission. Cuomo can collect data from Intel with his subpoena power and get cooperation from the EU and then have some very frank conversations with Intel.

I might add that it is unlikely they will try and prove criminal violations based on predatory pricing. More than likely if Intel lost it would be a civil fine based on the Donnelley Act.

It could be large amounts of money and injunctive relief, requiring that Intel not engage in certain kinds of contracts.

ES: So what’s your take on all of this?

JP: The allegations don’t suggest that this is a classic case of monopolistic practices against a competitor.

Intel could very well show that AMD is a viable competitor with its products in many PCs with a healthy advertising campaign.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 10, 2008 03:12 PM

January 09, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Consumer and business apps begin to blur due to Web 2.0

The shift from on-premise software to Web 2.0 or hosted software is a blurring of the lines between consumer and enterprise software that, if not surprising, is certainly faster than expected.

This is not quite the same as the consumerization of enterprise software. That phenomenon describes the fact that as workers come back into the office after playing on their home computer, they are beginning to expect more from their business applications. They want the same simplicity and ease of use. After all, consumer applications, by their very definition, have to be fun and easy to use, and they must offer a tangible benefit, be it hours of enjoyment from a game or a cool way to organize music, video, and family photos.

But the shift to Web 2.0 applications goes beyond workers wanting the same kind of capabilities built into their business software as they have in their home applications. Thanks to the accessibility of online apps, we are witnessing the corporate world swallowing whole the best of consumer software, many times without modification. Nothing says this more than two recent deals between enterprise ISVs and Facebook.

One ISV will make the official announcement next week, and I am not at liberty to name them. The other company, WorkLight, a provider of software development platforms, announced the integration of Facebook with its application.

The questions are, Where will this end, and what does it mean?

For one, I think the instant popularity of Facebook has opened the eyes of more forward-thinking corporate executives to new possibilities.

For example, the common complaint among many sales executives is that they could not get their sales force to use CRM software. Salespeople traditionally resisted filling out the forms and logging in to hard-to-use programs just to satisfy the needs of some vice president of sales and marketing and his staff. Also, the idea of collaborating with colleagues outside of the immediate team is not something that happens often in the corporate world. Now, thanks to Web 2.0, the companies will have a way to solve these kinds of problems.

Where will it lead?

For better or worse, I think it erodes the line between work and home life.

I had a colleague who always resented going out for drinks after work with his boss and coworkers. He said he didn't like mixing his work beer with his home beer. Unfortunately for him and others, those beers are getting quite mixed. Also, if you're using Facebook at home and your profile is available in the office, too, doesn't that help eliminate any separation between who you are as a professional and who you are at home?

I'm not sure that we will ever see SAP put a Guitar Hero Wii interface into R3, but thanks to the growing availability of hosted consumer and business applications, a faster adoption of easier-to-use and more intuitive interfaces will lead to greater office productivity.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 9, 2008 01:09 PM

January 08, 2008 | Comments: (0)

IBM and all that Jazz

The fun thing about IBM is that although it is a giant corporation it sometimes laughs at itself and even tries to inject a bit of humor into high tech.

For example, witness it giving the code name T-Rex to its mainframes after rival Sun Microsystems ran a series of ads in which it said IBM was a dinosaur and that the company belonged in a museum.

For all of its heralded stodginess and reputation as a company that at one time required its employees to wear blue suits and white shirts, it is in fact one of the few giant high tech enterprises that continues to innovate and I must say fascinate, at least some of the things it does fascinates this reporter.

This brings me to the latest fascinating bit of news out of Big Blue. They call it Jazz.

Jazz combines the concept of open source, collaboration and unified communications [UC]into a single online application that allows developers to work with one another in a truly collaborative environment.

This is not an ad hoc instance of developers having a set of collaboration tools in one window and their developer tools in another. Rather Jazz integrates UC tools like Instant Messaging with the IDE [Integrated Development Environment].

In the same window a developer can have the editor, compiler and debugger along with IM, presence, VoIP phone and so forth.

Jazz is built on Eclipse technology and Web standards and uses IBM's Rationale development tools.

Obviously, there are a lot more collaborative components than this. Go to the Web site, see link above, and find out for yourself.

The driving force behind Jazz is the ever growing complexity of IT projects that require dozens of different interconnected modules which require a huge team of often geographically remote development teams to complete.

Jazz addresses this challenge by bringing together under one virtual roof what typically has become a worldwide development effort to complete an enterprise-scale project.

Frankly, I don't see any other company doing this on this scale and with this level of sophistication.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 8, 2008 02:07 PM

January 08, 2008 | Comments: (0)

A new bandwidth breakthrough

Polymer integrated circuits promise gigabit Internet bandwidth everywhere. And the first killer app will be videoconferencing

We all realize that technology can change human behavior. If you don't quite know what I mean, just ask television network executives who have seen the erosion of their audience and ad dollars as more and more people log on to the Web for information and entertainment.

In the print world, my old Sunday morning ritual of looking through the newspaper classifieds for interesting stuff for sale is now a Craigslist pursuit I do at night, after work.

So what do you think will happen when technology delivers 1Gbps Ethernet bandwidth over the Internet?

I spoke with Hal Bennett, CEO of Third-Order Nanotechnology, which has patented technology to deliver that kind of performance using plastic, a.k.a. polymer, integrated circuits that convert an electronic signal to light and then switch that light on and off.

"For 30 years, people have been dreaming of building photonic integrated circuits out of polymers. Not only will they achieve integration, but they would achieve low cost. After 30 years of trying, we are on the verge of demonstrating the recipe," Bennett told me.

With a connection that gives a user a thousand times the performance of DSL, Bennett believes the killer application will be videoconferencing.

If you're scratching your head and thinking to yourself, "Not that old chestnut, again," hear Bennett out.

I know I for one have read, written, and heard about the Next Big Technology for videoconferencing time and again. And like many others, I've said, Who cares? Why is videoconferencing so important?

Well, Bennett believes the reason most people feel that way is because the videoconferencing experience has thus far been unsatisfactory, delivering choppy, unfocused talking heads with practically expressionless faces.

Bennett says gigabit Internet throughput will change all that. Not only will you be able to videoconference with 100 people, but you will be able to see and process the "micro-expressions" that run across each face at a thirtieth of a second.

Why is that important?

According to psychologist Paul Ekman, who developed the theory of micro-expressions, nuanced expressions lay the groundwork for the bulk of communication among people. Our brains interpret each of these little expressions, even though our conscious mind may not even see them.

And so, perhaps the real reason videoconferencing leaves us unsatisfied is that we can't really communicate on the subconscious level we need to in order to truly understand one another.

At gigabit speeds, the technology can update the view during a teleconference at 30 to 60 frames per second at a megapixel per frame. With, say, six people in a videoconference, that's a lot of bandwidth.

Finally, Bennett believes, "Humans were built for small groups."

Text, Bennett explains, enabled remote-control, top-down centralization. Thanks to the Internet and ever higher bandwidth, this is breaking down. The phenomenon we are witnessing was first suggested by Marshall McLuhan back in the '60s. McLuhan predicted that we are coming full circle back into small group activities that are distributed over the planet -- a global village, so to speak.

If Bennett is right, in the future, thanks to truly high-speed connectivity, we will be totally satisfied with the videoconference experience. And, because our level of satisfaction is taking place at a subconscious level, we won't even know why.

Viva technology and the human mind.

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Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 8, 2008 03:00 AM

January 07, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Is the success and influence of Gates and company repeatable in the 21st Century?

In reading that this is Bill Gates last appearance at CES [Consumer Electronics Show] I got to thinking, was Gates lucky the first time? Could he repeat in 2008 what he did in 1978?

What this question is not asking is can an entrepreneur start a company and become rich beyond his or her wildest dreams in 2008?

That question has been answered over and over again by people like Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google or Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, YouTube founders.

What I’m asking is can one person or one company create a high tech empire upon which almost all of the follow on technology is based?

Is it just the Windows operating system we are talking about here?

Yes and no.

Windows is at the heart of everything Microsoft has become. But at the same time, the creation of Office cements the deal. It, too, had to become essential, the backbone of everything we do or the operating system might have gone in another direction.

It is the combination of an operating system with a can’t do without set of applications that makes the picture complete.

Each feeds off and guarantees the success of the other.

Certainly, on a smaller scale the two Steves at Apple came close.

Linus Torvalds should also get some credit but I’m not ready to award him the brass ring.

Is it Google? They obviously see the relationship between operating environment, if not operating system, and the need to create essential applications within that environment.

And while Google Search is about as defacto a search engine as Windows is an operating system, Google Apps is by no means a must have suite of software.

So to the question can a person, a team or a company become as dominate in the 21st Century as Gates and company became in the 20th Century I think the answer is no, mainly for two reasons.

Here's why.

The world wide web has reached critical mass in terms of what services and applications it is capable of delivering. it can deliver just about anything you want to imagine.

At the same time the Internet is so successful it has created the desire for an all enveloping single network, IP.

That combination I believe replaces the old Microsoft formula for success. Where this will lead us, I’m not sure. But wherever it leads, it is the two teats of the ‘Net and IP that everything else will suckle from.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 7, 2008 12:30 PM

January 03, 2008 | Comments: (0)

East versus West in the marketplace -- who will win this duel to the death?

If there is such a thing as bringing closure to a rumor that was rampant at the end of last year, let me try to do that by saying it is highly unlikely that one of the top three Indian services organizations, Tata Consulting, Infosys or Wipro will buy French owned Capgemini.

The worldwide rumor mill was rampant with speculation.

The Economic Times of India had this to say:

"ET has learnt that Wipro was reportedly in talks with CapGemini, but may have decided against the deal as an acquisition of this size was difficult to digest. However, this shows Wipro's intent to pursue billion-dollar plus acquisitions and if sources are to be believed, the third-largest Indian IT services exporter could be gearing up for a big byte. Sudip Nandy, chief strategy officer, Wipro, merely said, 'It is market speculation.'"

Here’s the full story from ET.

France’s Le Figaro also claimed that Wipro was about to make an imminent acquisition of Capgemini.

"Selon la presse indienne, Wipro prépare une OPA sur la SSII française, qui bon-dit en bourse" said the headline.

The story followed with this:

"Wipro, numéro trois de la sous-traitance informatique en Inde, pourrait faire une offre sur Capgemini avant fin janvier, rapporte le journal Hindustan Times. L'offre valoriserait la société française à près de 4,9 milliards d'euros. Selon le quotidien qui cite des sources bancaires anonymes, les banques Citigroup et HSBC ont eu des discussions afin de finaliser le dossier avant la fin de l'année.."

See for the full story.

On this side of the Atlantic, InfoWorld got into the act early in the summer. Here’s an excerpt from that report.

"Infosys declined to comment on the reports. "We do not comment on market rumors,” a spokeswoman for the company said Friday. However, Infosys, in Banga-lore, indicated at its analyst conference in April that it may consider an acquisi-tion."

Again, here's the link.

I figured I needed to talk to someone that understood the DNA of these companies to get a better idea if these rumors could possibly be true, because if true such an acquisition would represent a watershed moment in what is fast becoming more and more of an economic duel for supremacy between east and west.

I gave Frances Karamouzis, vice president of research at Gartner a call.

Karamouzis says acquiring Capgemini is not the sort of thing any of the three major Indian services company would likely do for a number of reasons.

One they tend to buy niche companies that are focused in a particular industry or especially in the European market have an obvious geographic footprint or focus on a particular service area.

To that end Wipro acquired Enabler in Spain, a company that focuses on the retail market.

"Indian companies have shied away from mega acquisitions like Capgemini and Capgemini would not buy Wipro because they can’t afford it," Karamouzis told me.

So while Wipro, InfoSys and Tata are the still rising stars with huge market caps with double and triple growth rates over the last 20 quarters, according to Karamouzis, they are still reticent to make a really bold move.

As I said in a recent InfoWorld feature [http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/10/09/Indian-companies-buy-US-consultancies_1.html ] the Indian companies want to complement and penetrate into spaces where they currently don’t have the expertise but they are acquiring very selectively.

Karamouziz also tells me they are leery of a cultural clash that they fear would ensue if they made a huge acquisition that required a behemoth effort to integrate a large western management team.

The original Indian formula still works: labor arbitrage from a low cost destination. Capgemini with its headquarters in a high cost destination and with a high cost of labor does not fit into that formula.

The western companies also have their own operating style or formula, especially in the U.S. Here the bold move is most admired. It is a full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes mentality. Slow and steady does not win the race and is not much admired.

My question is will this reluctance on the part of the Indian companies to take a giant leap be their undoing? Do they need to be bolder or will the old formula continue to work?

On the other hand is the American style--see Oracle, IBM, HP--making big bold acquisitions and worrying about how to integrate the different corporate cultures later, the better strategy?

Karamouzis, speaking for Gartner predicts that two or three of the top Indian companies will edge out some of the current Western-based giants as market leaders in services to the enterprise.

"We predict two or three of them will penetrate the global top vendors," said Karamouzis.

However, the longer it takes to penetrate the global top vendor service market, the more time the current market leaders have to reassess and reevaluate their strategy.

This is indeed a duel between East and West, fought out in the business marketplace but with each side bringing its own cultural baggage along with it.

It is an interesting fight to watch but we may have to wait a few more years to see who wins.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 3, 2008 01:16 PM

January 02, 2008 | Comments: (0)

New year brings tough new state immigration laws

While efforts to rewrite immigration law at the federal level failed last year, two state measures, Tennessee House Bill No. 729 and Arizona House Bill 2779, will have far-reaching repercussions for immigrants who want to work in the United States, as well as for the employers who want to hire them.

As of Jan. 1, 2008, employers who hire noneligible immigrants — noneligible could mean either legal or illegal immigrants, depending on their visa status — will have their business license revoked.

This, as you can imagine, is tougher than a mere fine. This would put a company not in compliance with the new laws in Tennessee and Arizona out of business.

According to Greg Siskind, an immigration lawyer for Siskind Susser Bland, the question that remains open is whether or not a state or local government has the right to create its own immigration requirements beyond what the federal government requires.

"The Founding Fathers clearly gave Congress the sole authority to regulate immigration," says Siskind in his VisaLaw newsletter.

Arizona and Tennessee businesses fought the legislation to no avail.

How deeply this will affect IT in those two states remains to be seen. The bill may be targeted at lower-paying restaurant, landscaping, and other jobs considered nonskilled positions, but it is a wide net that may catch any company, including those hiring IT professionals, not following the new laws.

There are lots of details employers need to be aware of, and it is probably a good idea to read Siskind's newsletter, which offers 15 pages of details.

However, it is worth mentioning that employers using the new federal E-Verify system, which supposedly responds to the eligibility of a potential employee in about five seconds, isn't always accurate.

There have been cases where a perfectly eligible employee was denied a job because the E-Verify system misidentified him or her.

The E-verify system compares Social Security number data and information in Department of Homeland Security immigration databases.

The Tennessee law says an employer by law must determine the immigration status of a non-U.S. citizen and failing to do so could revoke the business license.

Finally, Siskind warns that the current Tennessee law does not provide for an appeals process.

The Arizona law stipulates that a first-time employer/violator of the law — where an employer knowingly hired a worker ineligible for employment — must terminate employment, and the employer is subject to a three-year probation period, wherein the employer must file quarterly reports on all new hires to the county or state attorney.

There's plenty more to chew on here, so do read the VisaLaw newsletter written by Greg Siskind.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 2, 2008 12:15 PM

January 02, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Marriage of IT and telecomm will create more job opportunities

What better proof point that IT and telecommunications are rapidly merging and evolving into a new industry segment than the fact that IBM is positioning itself for the change over through recent acquisitions in the last 18 months, and the coming introduction of new products and services.

If you want to think of IBM as a giant aircraft carrier that needs to turn itself around you may do so. But give them credit for this. The captain and his officers understood it was needed and started making preparations for a mid-course correction years ago.

It's not telecomm and it's not IT. Perhaps IP Telecom or IT telecomm is a better name for it but whatever you call it over the next several years we will see a rapid transformation until the old telecommunications industry is in fact absorbed as another arm of high tech.

Micromuse was a leader in telecommunications network management space, in fault management as well as fixed and IP performance management.

Vallent was a global leader in wireless performance management and in telecommunications service quality.

IBM acquired both.

The result will appear in the first half of 2008 as Netcool Software, from IBM’s Tivoli service arm that targets both the customer experience and service assurance.

Prior to these acquisitions, IBM focused in two primary areas in telecommunications, the service delivery platform [SDP] and in telecommunications transformation projects.

SDP helps define and deliver the new services now made possible over IP such as multimedia, wireless, presence, social networking, concierge and map information and all of the advertising components that are now enabled along with it.

But it was in service assurance for the telecomm industry--insuring all the hardware was working properly with optimized performance-- that IBM lacked a strong presence.

IP and IT services together bring to the telecomm market something the telecommunications industry never felt the need to do before, create a significant number of new services for the market and to expedite their launch.

In the world of high tech, unlike the old telecomm world, consumers have a very short attention span and companies had better be ready with the next new thing and the next one after that in rapid fire order.

IBM is already working with the likes of Sprint in the U.S. and Deutche Telekom in Europe to make the transformation over to IP.

IBM’s Kieran Moynihan , vice president and CTO Telecoms, at IBM's Tivoli software tells me IBM realized about three years ago that the telecomm, IT and media worlds were coming together. They looked at their own assets, strong in SDP and IT management, and decided they needed to strengthen their presence in telecommunications in the service assurance space, the management of the equipment, the base stations, switches, and so on, all of which now needs a new management layer as IP plays a role.

So, IBM’s strategy is meant to become the single, one stop shop solution provider, therefore pushing aside companies like HP for IT and telecomm service and Accenture as a system integrator or Oracle and HP in the SDP market.

This strengthens Big Blue in the linkage between the service layer and the creation of new services.

Even if this gives IBM a preeminent position in the short term, it probably won’t last long. Not much of a head start is my guess.

The combining of telecomm, IP, and media will attract giants from both industries, IT and telecommunications, like Nortel, Nokia and Siemens. Of course Cisco might be considered a hybrid with feet in both worlds already.

My guess is this new addition to the high tech family or new industry if you will, will not only force telecommunications geeks to learn new tricks but it will also require the learning of new skills on the part of IT professionals.

It will I believe become the new gold rush with plenty of employment opportunities for software and hardware engineers in this country and around the world.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 2, 2008 09:07 AM

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