BYOD: 3 reasons why it’s here to stay

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Are you an IT person who's resisting?

Take a hint – get over it! :)

When I had my first GUI based computer at home, I knew the Company green-screen system was doomed. It was more intuitive, I was more productive, I quickly started taking home work because I'd get it done in half the time. The core technical support teams complained about security, support & fitness-for-use. Didn't matter, people could see the most portent benefit – they got things done faster.

Fast-forward about 20 years. In that time I've done 1st/2nd/3rd Line, built Apps & Architected complete IT solutions. I think I'm aware of the so-called 'issues' from both sides. So, here's some thoughts:

Security (1) – stopping people taking work info? Are you nuts? I dare you to tell me that you cannot think of several ways to work around that issue with so-called locked-down kit, start with email & work your way through to Network Drives that happen to be on your home network – of course, if you work in Defence or someing it's different but, the ultra minority case does not prove the overwhelming majority fact: any member of staff who wants to get info out, will.

Security(2): – malware et-al. When was the last time you saw kit without modern AV/Firewall/anti-phishing software on it? More importantly, will you tell me you've never seen malware get through into a Corporate system? Really? Well I have (at 3 separate major global IT giants, to say nothing of their customer networks). Don't kid yourself that yur corporate security systems are anything better than the commercial equivalent – in fact they probably ARE the commercial equivalent. When my 70-odd year old Mum tells ME that she's just had the latest version of Norton installed, I know that security systems are in the public psyche!

Support: apart from the ease at which Policies can state that anyone going BYOD must have some kind of support in place – or (even more likely) simply state that if they don't have the kit they can't do the job, so why are they still working here(?) …

…Lets talk about “the support issue”: what's its outcome? That workers can't work because their kit is down? Have you seen how long it takes an internal support team to fix a broken laptop? The despair starts when the Automated email response tells your that your non-working kit comes under the “72-hour” fix policy (if your lucky!!), then when you finally get to a room somewhere (never at your own office) they look at you as if you died in the night & say “oh, it will take a day or two to get to – we will ring you”. Bah!

I cannot believe that some IT folks have the nerve to state that technical support is an essential element.

Bottom line – BYOD immensely popular with the people who pay your (IT is a support function, remember?) wages.

The reasons generally cited for not going BYOD are specious at best.

It's happening. Get over it. Better still, find a way to support the folks going there – that way you may not be marginalised

 

construction of a consumer-friendly digital future

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Just picked up via GigaOm the announcement that Telefonica is to setup a digital services firm with Spanish banks

  • A model that improves #MobileCommerce & multi-channel?
  • Collaboration between Banks & Utility companies?

This is an important evolution in the race to create an entirely organic consumer experience, alongside continuing developments around location-based Apps. Many strategists are talking about the 'visionary' aspect of consumers getting seamless interaction as they (for example) cruise along the High Street but, it's collaboration concepts such as the Telefonica/Caixa that will make this reality.

Point to note: I predict this action will rival the inception of credit card clearing or the DireDebit alliance: a vital plank in the construction of a consumer-friendly digital future.

 

LinkedIn is a T-Shirt, MySpace a Fashion Handbag

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Premise:

The consumerization of IT, both in Infrastructure (but especially, Apps) is having a profound & disruptive effect on technology adoption and change; its moving us from using the Bell Curve to the Fashion Curve as an assessor of product type, maturity, value & Risk.

Why?

Because the consumer has become “technology king” and that consumer values ownership in a fashion context. Traditional ‘technology companies’ that fail to understand this will be marginalised by the ‘digital companies’ such as Amazon & Google. All companies that fail to see how societal changes, advances in communication and digital competence of their workforce will see their competitive advantage wither away.

This means?

Careful attention should be placed on how a product is perceived, as this will affect its value & use. This applies equally to corporate as to consumer levels of use; assess (corporate) in terms of gamification & BYOD as example of how corporate staff will be less effective is they use ‘unfashionable’ products. In this context, mid-to-enterprise sized organisations should be looking to adopt gamification of process and a social-media mash-up approach toward their applications. In particular, Back-Office products should be broken into “Micro-Apps” which deliver an organic approach toward utilisation that better fits human interaction and Business Process consumption. Additional benefits of this approach include the re-definition and metrication of applications as services (consumption via a SOA model) and PAYG (service consumption via the Cloud model).

Mitigation?

Corporates should look to using “Fad/Fashion/Basic Product” approach to assessing their product adoption and look toward utilising products perceived as ‘Basic Product’ where long life-cycles are anticipated.

Example

Web-based tools for social media connection and information sharing MySpace and LinkedIn both began life in the same year and yet their usage patterns describe clear differences that place MySpace as ‘Fashion’ and LinkedIn as ‘Basic Product’:

03-04-2013 23-10-08(Google Trends. Note the tip-over in July 2011)

04-04-2013 10-00-59

(Fashion Cycle: Copyright Cornell University)

28-03-2013 23-22-52

Google trends: LinkedIn global search (above) & MySpace (below)28-03-2013 23-23-10

Delivering Digital: 16 capability questions

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Are you in the business of delivering digital these days? It's hardly surprising that, increasingly, organisational optimisation and innate agility drives a tendency for small-scale focused companies.

Atomised companies and the tendency toward boutique business in digital transformation is unsurprising yet it's difficult to stay fresh and relevant as life cycles continue to shrink.

For me, there are four fundamental pillars to maintaining a position as an innovative supplier of services. Careful balance between each of the four pillars needs to be maintained – posing and answering the 16 questions I've asked in the graphic will go some way toward helping you ensure your organisation stays fresh and relevant!

 

 

Crikey. Cloud, Time & Conservative-attitudes

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Gosh, it's been months since I blogged, don't ask me why – it feels like I was going to post something 'tomorrow' forever, then suddenly it's 2013!

Ah well, ces't la vie and all that. Anyway, my long silence terminates with me copying a comment I just posted on the Reg website, mainly because I was amazed (and a little appalled) at how backward-looking and conservative most of the comments were. I shouldn't be I suppose, the truth is most IT Folks are very conservative by nature. Ho-Hum, here's a copy of my Post:

Ok now everyone has got their dose of “Those were the Days” mania, let's have some reality shall we…

First off, to *anyone* who tells me that the consumer-level ease of a service like DropBox is “little more than FTP and terminals”. Are you mad?! FTP may be ok for us sad tech-types but, did you every have to train an end-user is FTP useage? Were you confident they wouldn't end up deleting entire branches of a company website? Do you enjoy using a clunky text interface? Oh, i could go on and on with this one. The point is, modern Cloud services are easier, faster, more intuitive and more fun to use than ever before, which is why 100's of millions now use them in every business context imaginable.

Second point – so, Cloud is “time-sharing with a sexier name”?! Right, so when you were a SysAdmin for a mainframe using clunky old time-sharing to manage user access you had tens of millions of users? Er, no you didn't – because mainframe systems' time-sharing at the user-level were simply not configured for those levels and could not be managed due to their time-intensive setup (hence the requirement for entire flipping DP teams and the endlessly annoying calls at stupid hours because someone who was insufficient.y trained had cocked up a user – again!). Time sharing in the context of processor sharing on the other hand, is something that has always been here – the point with Cloud is its ability to be used & consumed automatically, easily, confidently & competently at a far lower cost.

Third, I think the author was simply using Apple as an example of a company who wouldn't blow it's entire bottom line if it were to break into a new operating/business model, i would say its disingenuous to let the onversation degrade into an Apple snarl-fest – replace with Google if it makes you feel better

Oh my Gawd people, stop whining about what's gone before – do you really think its comparable to the ease, sophistication & automation of cloud based systems. I dont and i reckon I'm as long in the tooth as the rest of you, given i was working on Mainframes in 1979. Yup, it's been done before but it ain't better, ask anyone holding a 19th century Colt Revolver who's facing off against someone with an M4 Assault Rifle (after all they ARE both guns that fire more than one bullet!!!!!)

On the authors' assertion – he's bang on WRT SAP, Oracle and etc – who should be looking at Cloud and thinking “is this my Novell moment”. Incumbent companies have always struggled to wash their wares with the latest paradigm, the truth is the new players will continue to take market share away from them; those who go 'safe' will lose competitive advantage to those who are prepared to absorb new Cloud methods into their business processes – and they won't be thinking about FTP when their doing it!

…and here's a link to the original article:

El-Reg post

And here' a link to the article by David L that set off the Reg:

David Linthicum post at InfoWorld

 

The Global Executives Lament

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Today's been a day of seeing funny, irritating and (sometimes) contemptuously bathetic Public Relations drivel. A day of repetitive scenes that I'd rather not have read about. A day to remember that, in my roles as a Corporate Exec responsible for global deals sometimes in the $1 billion range, the Reality Dysfunction of major Corporations knows no bounds.

To cheer myself, I've re-written the famous lines from Roy (Rutger Hauer) to make them more apt. Those of you who've penetrated the world of senior Execs – I'm sure it will resonate :-)

I've seen things you wouldn't believe. Attack Bids on Fire off the Shoulder of bad Strategy. I've watched C-Execs shatter in the dark of failed Governance Gate. All those moments will be lost in Corporate slime, like emails in erase. Time to fly.

;-)

 

Why the number of Smartphones per Country doesn’t help your Mobile Strategy

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I recently read an intriguing article by Harrison Weber on TNW (a great site, what do you mean your not reading it?!) entitled iOS and Android are being adopted faster than any consumer technology in history. The report was generated by Flurry, a real-time Analytics firm.

Funnily enough, the part that interested me was not the iOS/Android war, it was the data around total number of Smartphones per Country. Specifically, this chart (I’ve rebuilt this as the chart on TNW isnt too clear and for other reasons, which will be :)

Here’s the chart:

So. It shows the total number of Smartphones in each Country. If you are a a company with an interest in marketing yourself at Consumers you might walk away with the impression that USA & China are the Countries you should target. After all, they have the most smartphones, right? Wrong. If your building multi-channel operations in a multi-country context I’d argue that what you are really looking for is where are the savvy smartphone consumers? Which countries have smartphone penetration that can mean something to my #socialmedia & #mobile strategies?

So, I played with the data very slightly and came up with the following. This chart shows the penetration of smartphone useage as a percentage of the population of each country:

Wow! Quite a difference here. This chart shows that the country with the heaviest (and de-facto most savvy) smartphone consumers is South Korea. Other key target countries are USA, UK and Canada, with Spain & France closely fighting for the 5th spot.

This data was based by looking up the total population of each country (I used the World Fact Book data and each countries’ population was indicated to be correct as of June 2012) and getting the percentage from the total smartphone number/population.

So, whats the bottom line? Well for me its this; analytics are great (I’m a big fan) but, be careful what you think your getting when the data gets churned, you may base an entire strategy on the wrong thinking.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that Flurry has a brilliant tool here. There are a lot of good tools on the market but, the key to a succesful strategy are your people – are they asking the right questions when creating your business-critical strategies? If they are solely relying on software, you could be in trouble – I suggest you bring in people who can help ask the right questions and help tease out the relevant information before rushing toward a potentially failing business plan.

 

Had an Idea recently? The pain of project approval

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I heard a repeat of an interview with Tim Berners-Lee today, where he mentioned that if it wasnt for the fact that his Boss had let him do the work on hypertext informally – i.e. if he’d had to go through the formal project approval process – then he would never have “invented it” [the www]. The interview really resonated with my (and many friends) experiences and encouraged me to put this quick graphic together. Note, persons with no sense of humour (or Quality-Approval Managers) may not find this funny ;-)

When C-Suite Suits Collide

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Are the roles of CIO and CMO colliding? If they are, will they, in a human-version of plate tectonics, create a new C(ontinent): the CDO?

I think they are, they will and they must. I’m going to write a piece on this over the next few days so really this is a placeholder but, as a temptation; some thoughts:

Definition of a CIO according to Wikipedia: “…the CIO is generally responsible for processes and practices supporting the flow of information” and “…the key contributor in formulating strategic goals for an organization”

Definition of CMO according to Wikipedia: “He or she must work towards objectives such as revenue generation, cost reduction, or risk mitigation” and “…Ultimately, the CMO is responsible for facilitating growth, sales and marketing strategy.”

Clearly, there’s a lot more to it than the snippets above. In my follow up article I’m going to explore the cross relationships and why I think that we’re witnessing the birth of a new C-suit, the CDO.

Why? because the blurring of integration in business, coupled with macro trends such as #socialmedia dictate a breed of person for whom marketing & information are two sides of the same coin.

They ARE, because already there are important sectors for which technology drives their ability to operate, leveraging tech today requires a keen marketing head more than a ‘tech-head’. Banking is a prime example, most banks today are tech houses that leverage their tech to supply financial services – take away the tech and the bank ceases to function

They WILL because the social structure of the company requires them to exist, as digital transformation needs dictate the heartbeat of today’s business.

They MUST because, without the new CDO, business will be unable to harness the synergies between the two underlying forces and the CMO/CIO will end up tearing apart the company in their fight for the same funds to do the same thing (from two separate perspectives)

The CDO; welcome to the New Continent for the digital lifeblood of the integrated enterprise.

(more on this v.soon!)