SiliconANGLE http://siliconangle.com Just another Siliconangle.com weblog Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:51:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Oracle Who? SAP Co-CEOs Slam Oracle – They Are The Old Way http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/16/oracle-who-sap-co-ceos-slam-oracle-they-are-the-old-way/ http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/16/oracle-who-sap-co-ceos-slam-oracle-they-are-the-old-way/#comments Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:35:37 +0000 John Furrier http://siliconangle.com/?p=14115

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]]> Under a beautiful day in Silicon Valley while Jonathan Schwartz (ex Sun CEO) blogs away as a mere moral just weeks after Sun has been consumed by Oracle, SAP introduced the new five-week old partnership of co-chief executives Jim Snabe and Bill McDermott.

Jim Snabe and Bill McDermott are sharing the role of CEO at the global powerhouse software company SAP - whose current value is at $54 billion dollar (market capitalization). Jim and Bill were visibility tired, but they didn’t show it.  After hours of jet lag and late nights honing and finalizing SAPs business and technology strategy, the two CEOs showed excitement and punch to their new business strategy.

Bill and Jim Show
Jim Snabe talked about the agile and entrepreneurial spirit of the new SAP product plans with the energy of a newly funded entrepreneur. Bill McDermott had that east coast (my guess is New Jersey) accent of a no nonsense “hard charging” and “can do” executive.  I liked both these guys

Overall, I saw an impressive balance between two solid guys - the new CEO pair in the new executive team. Jim Snable being the “product” guy and Bill being the “business” guy. This will either be a home run or a disaster. I like the approach and think it will work.

The underlying tone was “screw you” Oracle you’re old and we got the goods over you.  SAP has been quiet of late on specifics except pounding the innovation message.  SAP seems to be one of the old school software companies that seemed out of touch with the key trends.

“Oracle Is Thing Of The Past – History Will Play It Out That Way”

Microsoft and Oracle have been making moves lately pushing “purpose built” software for hardware devices.  SAP has been the only one without a date at the enterprise software “prom” when it comes to integration with hardware vendors.  Although SAP has recently been touting innovation all over the place, many in the industry have been saying “show us the innovation”.

SAP’s new co-CEO partnership will accelerate SAPs innovation capability.  They have a interesting dynamic and comprehensive strategy.

On Oracle Bill McDermott throws a haymaker at Oracle when he said

“these are heterogeneous environments (and networks) they don’t buy “a stack” they are buying an idea - a business outcome.. something that can change the way that they (customers) can run their company.  To have an open independent business software company that can work with any and all partners to give the customers what they want ... (what they want) is the best business idea at the lowest possible cost at the faster time to value - this is the model that we (SAP) believes in. 

The old twentieth century model that Oracle has chosen to replicate is one of the past and history will play it out that way.”

Growth Plan - New Strategy – Three Pillars

Pillar 1:  On-Premise and On-Demand

SAP has been a leaders for years in business applications for the on-premise world and now they have defined a product strategy going forward to enter the on demand world.  They believe in a hybrid approach where enterprise can chose on premise and on demand extensions.  They didn’t go into specifics but will make significant product launches for the on-demand space this coming year.

Pillar 2:  On-Device

SAP wants to enable their customers to consume SAP software on any device.  They have been refining and mastering over the past few years. This plan is based upon the assumption that you abstract the business logic in the application from the front-end logic and that allows you to consume SAP applications on any device.  They will allow partners to do the same and hope to grow an ecosystem that innovates the user experience for SAP customers and users.  Acquisition of Business Objects and their business analytics is a key part of their user centric value proposition.

Pillar 3:  Orchestration

Orchestration of data and business process across the landscape of on-premise, on-device and on-demand software and that the end to end process in in-tact and consistent.  To be a leader across SAP and non-SAP applications in the area of master data, synchronization, life cycle management both on-premise and on-demand.

Acceleration Plan – SAP want to leverage agile organization to harness the power of an entrepreneur (startup) with the scale of a big company.


SAP Still Without a Date At The Hardware Dance
Ever since SAP was a young company, they always had an important relationship with hardware vendors such as HP and SUN. Now more than ever SAP needs to figure out their role with the ever changing hardware vendor landscape especially in light of SUN being bought by their arch rival Oracle.

SAP didn't shed any light on any plans for deeper integration into hardware devices. Although SAP talked about the "new model" of software, they did not talk about the new model in hardware - purpose build hardware with applications build directly to specific hardware platforms.

Here is my direct question on the hardware question. I am guessing that they will do deals with either HP and/or VMware and EMC.

Open and Cloud Plans

SAP seemed very focused and had a good message about being open. If you watch the video you'll see their new strategy is very counter to Oracle. The cloud messages was not clear but it was talked about mainly as a hybrid approach.

The new big messages that I heard were: we will bring the fight to Oracle and we are open to building a growing ecosystem.

If SAP can truly be open and enable developers plus develop an "angle" with hardware vendors via deeper integration then I see their execution being a success.

It was nice seeing the new unified SAP leadership now they need to "turn up the volume" on specifics and show the execution of their strategy.

Here is the video of their briefing.

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]]> http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/16/oracle-who-sap-co-ceos-slam-oracle-they-are-the-old-way/feed/ 7 Looks Like Google Is Out Of China – Senior Official Says It Must Obey The Law http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/16/looks-like-google-is-out-of-china-senior-official-says-it-must-obey-the-law/ http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/16/looks-like-google-is-out-of-china-senior-official-says-it-must-obey-the-law/#comments Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:21:00 +0000 Tom Foremski http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/16/looks-like-google-is-out-of-china-senior-official-says-it-must-obey-the-law/

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]]> Joe McDonald with the Associated Press, today reported:

China's top Internet regulator insisted Friday that Google must obey its laws or "pay the consequences," giving no sign of a possible compromise in their dispute over censorship and hacking.
"If you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to pay the consequences," Li Yizhong, the minister of Industry and Information Technology, said on the sidelines of China's annual legislature.

That's a position that has no room for negotiation.

Yet Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, earlier this week was reported by Jerry Dicolo at the Wall Street Journal, saying, "We are in active negotiations with the Chinese government." He added that "something will happen soon."

What are they negotiating over? The Chinese position is crystal clear: we're not budging. image

It has been two months since Google threatened to leave China as a response to attacks by hackers it said were agents of the Chinese government. It said it would stop censoring Google search results in China.

Li Yizhong told the AP that China will continue to censor Internet content for the public good.

"If there is information that harms stability or the people, of course we will have to block it," he said.

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied that it was the source of the hacker attacks on Google and has said it would severely punish any Chinese hackers but that Google had not made an official complaint, or provided any evidence.

Foremski's Take: It looks as if Google has painted itself into a corner in China. By saying it will stop censoring its results and that it may have to leave China, it has left itself with no options. Negotiations with the Chinese government have produced no compromise from the authorities.

It's interesting to speculate what those negotiations could have been about. What could Google offer in return for being allowed to stay in China but not censor its search results?

The Chinese authorities are far more skillful in these types of situations than Google's leadership.

Will Google still maintain research, and sales operations in China, but withdraw its search service? What about its other products such as GMail, etc? Will Google's spiderbots still index Chinese web sites?

Leaving the world's largest and fastest growing Internet market is a serious blow for Google, especially if it turns out that the hacker attack was not of Chinese origin.

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    SiliconANGLE says:
    March 16, 2010 9:41 am

    SA>: Looks Like Google Is Out Of China – Senior Official Says It Must Obey The Law http://j.mp/92QRWi

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter


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    0Solace0 says:
    March 16, 2010 9:42 am

    RT @SiliconANGLE: SA>: Looks Like Google Is Out Of China – Senior Official Says It Must Obey The Law http://j.mp/92QRWi

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter


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    Solacetech says:
    March 16, 2010 9:42 am

    RT @SiliconANGLE: SA>: Looks Like Google Is Out Of China – Senior Official Says It Must Obey The Law http://j.mp/92QRWi

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter


    Reply
    rizzn says:
    March 16, 2010 9:48 am

    SA> Looks Like Google Is Out Of China – Senior Official Says It Must Obey The Law http://dlvr.it/FLF3

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter


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    SIGindia says:
    March 16, 2010 9:51 am

    RT @SiliconANGLE: SA>: Looks Like Google Is Out Of China – Senior Official Says It Must Obey The Law http://j.mp/92QRWi

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter


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]]> http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/16/looks-like-google-is-out-of-china-senior-official-says-it-must-obey-the-law/feed/ 5 iPad Has User Log-In Flaw http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/15/ipad-has-user-log-in-flaw/ http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/15/ipad-has-user-log-in-flaw/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:10:47 +0000 Anton Wahlman http://siliconangle.com/?p=14094

iPad Has User Log-In Flaw is a post from: SiliconANGLE
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]]> Amazingly, nobody has yet pointed out a severe usage limitation on Apple's iPad that surely will cause grief with the very first reviewers. I'll get right to the bottom line: Just like the iPod Touch, the iPhone and most or even all other smartphones, the iPad lacks multiple user profile logins, including any "Guest" login.  Also reports are that orders are dropping after a spike on Friday. 

Think of the iPad as one big iPod Touch or iPhone. Once you've entered the imagepassword, you're in. And I mean in! You have complete access to all emails, instant messages, the address book and calendar. Contrast this with a laptop: On a PC, you may have, say, four different user logins (father, mother, son and daughter) and one generic "Guest" login. This means you can't see others' emails, instant messages, address books, calendars and any other documents created. Privacy is protected.

So why is the lack of multiple user login or a guest account such a critical flaw on the iPad, when the world of smartphones doesn't seem to have crumbled in the wake of a similar deficiency? The answer should be obvious, but I will spell it out anyway: Unlike an in-pocket smartphone, the iPad is almost naturally a somewhat communal device.

Where will you find the iPad most times? On the table, not in the pocket. What is its main purpose? To surf the Web, among many other things, of course. There is almost an expectation that anyone should be able to pick it up and use it. Just imagine the regular family of four: Residing on the dining table, kitchen counter or coffee table, the kids in the family will be jumping for the iPad at every moment. Will you tell them, "No?" Can you imagine their loud screams?

For the iPad to have meaningful utility to a productive adult, it needs to be synchronized with your personalized data using iTunes and Apple's MobileMe. But wait. By containing all this personalized data, including your emails, address book and instant messages, just for starters, the kids will be only seconds away from destroying your most valuable information -- often work-related -- on the iPad. You can see the headlines right now: "Kid Gets Password to iPad ...." Fill in the humiliating blank.

The fact of the matter is that the iPad is a lot more like a laptop than a smartphone in terms of how you need to protect your information. You wouldn't let your kids use your laptop under your personal login, with access to your emails, address book, documents, and instant messages. This will force parents and others to not sync their personal information -- through iTunes and  MobileMe -- with the iPad, at which point the iPad has immediately lost a material portion of its intended utility.

It should be very easy for Apple to fix this critical flaw. In fact, Apple needs to do the same for the iPhone and the iPod Touch as well. You want to be able to lend your iPhone and iPod Touch to someone -- no matter how temporarily -- knowing that all this person can do is to surf the Web, depending on how limited you have set the permissions. The same goes for all the other  smartphone systems - Blackberry from Research in Motion, Google's Android, Palm, Nokia and so forth.

Until such time that Apple fixes this critical flaw, however, this gives rise to what I predict will be the biggest complaint about the device, with the possible exception of the much-feared lack of   ubiquitous multitasking. As it stands, no user in his or her right mind will dare to synch the iPad with iTunes and MobileMe. And there goes much of the utility of the device. And for those who dare, they have just signed their own personal information death warrant courtesy of their kids.

Someone told me that the solution will be for that family of four to simply buy four iPads. That may even be Apple's secret plan to beat all of its revenue estimates! Please. If there was a more obvious way to upset your new iPad owners, I can't think of one. You have just spent $500 to $830 on a device that's fundamentally less capable than a $300 laptop and immediately you're told that you need to buy four of them in order to protect your personal information. Please!

In the movie "Armageddon", one astronomer declares "We have 18 days!" until an asteroid hits Earth. Indeed, Apple, you have a April 3 deadline to fix this. You can do it. I hope. Or else the reviews won't read so well.

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]]> http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/15/ipad-has-user-log-in-flaw/feed/ 11 HP Storage Play? My HP V8 Moment http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/14/hp-storage-play-my-hp-v8-moment/ http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/14/hp-storage-play-my-hp-v8-moment/#comments Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:38:16 +0000 Dave Vellante http://siliconangle.com/?p=14087

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]]> Wow—HP is finally getting its act together in storage. For years HP has talked about leveraging the systems and storage business but that vision has never materialized as a serious differentiator. Guess what? It’s finally happening.

And there’s an added bonus, HP’s move to compete with Cisco makes it the only company on the planet that owns a robust server, storage and networking stack.     How did that happen? Here’s the simple formula:

Hire someone (Donatelli) that understands the business and can execute

  • Keep the best executives, restructure the talent pool and bring in people you trust
  • Create a vision with big time goals
  • Set some specific, measurable objectives and put a strategy in place to meet these
  • Hire more great people – including a boatload of feet on the street
  • Organize and incentivize them properly
  • Acquire Ibrix and 3Com.
  • Execute

That's the play.     Having just spent two days at an analyst event I came away much more enthusiastic about HP than I have in more than a decade. I witnessed a mashup of matured EMC testosterone with HP professionalism and management excellence. Throw in an enormous dose of $50B supply chain muscle and you have a serious player with a new kid on the block mentality.

HP Goes Commodity

Someone said to me the other day (trying to disinfect my recently Donatelli-ized brain) “HP is going commodity – they’re hosed.” My response: When Mark Hurd took over HP its PC business was sucking wind. Last quarter it threw off about $500M in operating profit. If that’s commodity, I’ll take it. Shades of Jerome B. York people—cut the fat; print cash.

Everyone on the planet is talking about modular components. But from what I saw this week HP is way ahead in terms of developing a single modular platform that combines servers, storage and networking. EMC’s doing some good work between midrange and V-Max. Cisco Nexus – nice package. IBM blades…good stuff. But HP is combining server, storage and network packaging in a single platform. And with the largest supply chain leverage in the world it will do some damage. Son of Storageworks x 3 folks.

HP Going for Growth—Low end Block and Scale out NAS

Donatelli and Roberson both cut their teeth in a high end block-based world and they have their sights set on growth-- Ironically, low end block with Lefthand and scale out file storage with Ibrix. The product strategy is to have a single modular platform with common components; make the storage controller a commodity server and give the system personality through software. Block, file, name your protocol, scale out, single name space, virtualize the IO and network, differentiate with flexibility and responsiveness.  Oh and did I mention cost structure is important? Shades of NetApp with a $50B supply chain leverage.

HP's version of V-Block with a $50B supply chain. That’s equal to the combined revenue of VMware + Cisco + EMC. What about VMware integration you ask? Fair question-- how does HP differentiate?

What About Differentiation?

Over lunch at the analyst meeting I was speaking with Christine Reischl, HP’s Senior Vice President and General Manager of Industry Standard Servers (ISS). She flat out stated that for HP, virtualization has to be about more than the hypervisor; that HP needs to find ways to differentiate through packaging, cross server/storage/networking group synergies, virtual IO—i.e. unifying management and IO, scale out, mission criticality, energy efficiency, etc.

Here’s another form of innovation. HP has struck a deal with the Microsoft devil to make purpose built appliances for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and SQL. Microsoft’s head is up its DAS but HP doesn’t care because it has a deal to sell Exadata-like appliances along with Mr. Softy.

And once HP completes the acquisition of 3Com it will be a very solid #2 in networking in the data center behind Cisco. Can HP compete with trying-to-re-invent-the-Internet Cisco? You bet. While Cisco is announcing that the CRS-3 will change our lives, HP is plotting to cut data center networking costs and simplify the lives of IT managers across the planet. Is there a market for that? Um. Ya.

Any Gaps?

Of course. HP’s storage portfolio is still fragmented and needs to be rationalized. It has to transition from a block-based EVA installed base to a new modular unified storage world. HP appears to have missed the data deduplication boat and needs to figure out the whole data reduction thing. Of bigger importance, it doesn’t own the hypervisor and is out of the running (for now) in the really big software land grabs. Software represents only about 3% of HP's revenue yet the company continually touts taht it is the 6th largest software company in the world (this is based on U.S. revenues by the way)-- HP can do better in software.  And the EDS integration is still taking a long time; although EDS is a huge asset long term, especially in vertical industries for HP.

But the bottom line for me is the new organization. Dave Donatelli, Randy Seidl, Garry Veale, Tom Joyce—all ex-EMC, all really competent, well connected, motivated and serious players. HP’s ESSN (Enterprise Storage Servers and Networking) is hiring hundreds of sales people and they report to Donatelli. Inside of twelve months, Donatelli has made this happen plus acquired Ibrix, is in the process of acquiring 3COM and has struck an important deal with Microsoft.

I can’t wait to see what happens in the next twelve months.

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]]> http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/14/hp-storage-play-my-hp-v8-moment/feed/ 11 Leo Laporte Visits Austin. Has Lunch. http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/12/leo-laporte-visits-austin-has-lunch/ http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/12/leo-laporte-visits-austin-has-lunch/#comments Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:39:28 +0000 springnet http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/12/leo-laporte-visits-austin-has-lunch/

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]]> Lunch with the greatest podcaster of our generation? Why not. He tweeted. “Lunch at Ironworks.”

Leo Laporte and his entourage and some fans are in Austin for SXSW.  It’s Leo’s first.  He’s already boggled at the myriad of events and choices.  What party to go to?  What panel?

Leo will be tricasting his “This Week in Google” (TWIG) and “This Week in Tech” (TWIT) from TexasCoworking at 200 E Sixth Street in Austin, TX on Saturday, March 13, 2010 and Sunday, March 14, both at 5 pm CST.  Texas Coworking provided the equipment and space and both SiliconAngle (Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins and Michael Sean Wright) and NewTek Tricaster provided expertise, production and equipment for this event and their own daily podcast during SXSW.

[Editor’s Note: Paul cross-posted this at Texas Coworking. –mrh]

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]]> http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/12/leo-laporte-visits-austin-has-lunch/feed/ 10 EMC Does the Vision Thing: Federated Virtualized Storage http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/12/emc-does-the-vision-thing-federated-virtualized-storage/ http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/12/emc-does-the-vision-thing-federated-virtualized-storage/#comments Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:44:59 +0000 Dave Vellante http://siliconangle.com/?p=14058

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]]> Last October I wrote:

"By late 2012, federated storage will be the architecture of choice for large new storage deployments. These capabilities will dramatically improve IT's ability to respond to business needs with minimal disruptions. IT organizations should plan to aggressively adopt federated storage as it becomes commercially available." image

Around that same timeframe, Nick Allen wrote a piece about Chad Sakac’s Long Distance Live vMotion demo at VMworld 2009 and asked :

"So, has EMC solved the long-distance cache coherency and distributed lock management problem that has plagued the industry forever?"

Today (3/11/2010), EMC’s President of Information Infrastructure, Pat Gelsinger unveiled a vision for federated storage which makes our two posts last year pretty timely. You really have to hand it to EMC. In late 2007 things were getting kind of boring and Joe Tucci leaks Hulk and Maui. Then a few months later, EMC lands a haymaker by announcing flash drives in Symmetrix. Next was the buzz EMC created around its private cloud vision; followed by Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST).  And now-- virtualized, private cloud-ready, dynamically scalable, distributed cache coherent, automated, always-on, efficient, on-demand, active/active, globally federated storage. (Thanks to Chuck Hollis for providing Gelsinger’s slides which enabled that sentence).

What is Federated Storage?

Here’s Wikibon’s definition:

Federated storage is the collection of autonomous storage resources governed by a common management system that provides rules about how data is stored, managed, and migrated throughout the storage network. In this definition, storage resources include disk capacity managed by controllers or appliances controlling multiple arrays.

Practitioners should think of individual resources (e.g. arrays) as nodes within the federation.

Shades of Global Sysplex

Global Sysplex was an IBM mainframe innovation with the following attributes:

  • A geographically dispersed set of processors within synchronous distances.
  • Separate resources acting as a single global pool.
  • Applications and data could be moved around and shared across processors.
  • One key ingredient of Sysplex was the Sysplex timing mechanism which acted as a time stamp (not as important for federated storage).
  • Another element was global cache management to store things in a global shared cache (important for federated storage).

By enabling a loosely coupled set of storage resource nodes to act unilaterally and still be managed centrally, organizations can create networks of virtually limitless capacities, move data and applications globally, eliminate disruptive migrations and dramatically improve recovery.

Oh…and this time you don’t need a bazillion dollar mainframe complex to do it.

What Problems Does this Solve?

Today’s remote replication systems (e.g. SRDF) can be incredibly complex and expensive. Organizations need to set up disk systems at multiple locations and pre-allocate space and communications lines and essentially purpose build replica systems to support specific applications. Federated storage enables a general purpose virtualized pool that can be established to migrate workloads, free up disk space, end of life assets and bring on new resources much more quickly and at substantially lower costs. Planning is simplified and RPO is improved.

The big benefits will be at synchronous distances but federated storage will also help improve the efficiencies at asynchronous distance. I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for asynch active/active (remember Chad’s demo took a long time to move a few GBs – how long to move a TB?) but the overheads of wait times and acknowledging writes will be dramatically improved by avoiding time-consuming remote gets and message queues.

And the services delivered can be way more leveraged across the application portfolio.

Questions and Comments from The Blogosphere

@VanessaAlvarez1 tweeted:

"#EMCVS first version w/b appliance, why do we always start with a HW piece? Why not just go straight to making it a feature?"

Gelsinger mentioned that one of the secret ingredients was IP acquired from Yotta Yotta. @RayLucchesi wrote on his blog today:

"Yotta Yotta’s product was a distributed, coherent caching appliance that had FC front end ports, an Infiniband appliance internal network and both FC and WAN backend links."

My understanding is this isn’t just Yotta Yotta re-purposed but that IP was the starting point.

Ray also said:

"So it looks like #emcvs is solving the DaaD problem. makes active-active and vmotion ovr dist easier but is their a mkt for it?"

I think so. First, most organizations in the F500 doing SRDF will look at this over time and see it as a more attractive alternative. But I think this vision has broader appeal than just the F500 because it can potentially scale down, over time.

The best comment of the day on Twitter goes to @storageio (Greg Schultz).

"Given Yotta Yottas history of delivering Nada Nada, can EMC turn it around with #emcvs into Lotta Lotta?"

I have no idea but that’s pretty funny.

{Editors Note: Please welcome Dave Vellante as a new contributor to SiliconAngle.  Dave is a seasoned vet in the computer business who spend 15 years at IDC as a top analyst and now entrepreneur and founder of Wikibon.  Wikibon is a new open analyst firm based out of Boston and Hopkinton Massachusetts.  Wikibon has become the Web's first and largest technology research and advisory organization where peers help each other make better technology investment decisions and share best practices. Dave is active on Twitter @dvellante and a great analyst  - Welcome aboard Dave! - Cheers John Furrier, @furrier}

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Twitter Data Suggests A New Class Of Web User – 80/20 Rule Applies is a post from: SiliconANGLE
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]]> A report by Mashable that walks through data researched by Barracuda Networks Labs speaks volumes on what I call a new class of web user.  The fanatic, engaged early adopter.image

We (SiliconAngle labs) were storing and analyzing twitter up until July 2009 until the project moved over to Bing. The reported data from Mashable is pretty much on the money.

Mashable reports:

Barracuda Labs also analyzed Twitter’s growth over time, and the numbers are consistent with previous reports that show while Twitter grew like wildfire in early 2009, it has dramatically slowed down in recent months. Going back further to early 2008, the report estimates that the microblogging tool grew by just 0.31%. However, with the quick rise of media coverage and the influx of celebrities such as Oprah and Shaq, Twitter use grew by 20% in April 2009 before dropping off to 0.34% growth in December 2009.

While the news isn’t stellar, it isn’t all bad for Twitter (Twitter) — these metrics are moving in the right direction. A full 79% of users had less than 10 tweets in June 2009, but that number dropped to 73% by December. Eighty percent of users had less than 10 followers in June 2009, but that percentage dropped to 74% by December. If that trend continues, you’ll hopefully see a more diverse and active Twitterverse going forward.

My Angle On Twitter Data - It's Not About Monitoring But Action and Influence

Since July we moved on from that project of crawling Twitter.   Now we are prototyping a monitoring methodology that looks at interaction data on Twitter and the results from that project is very telling.  I've said before Twitter is not for the mainstream users, but instead it's for a new class of user or active users.

The Twitter user data speaks to the behavior of those new users.  The Twitter user base seems to follow the classic 80/20 rule in terms of activity driving value - 20% of the user provide 80% of the value.  That being said the search and discovery value of twitter is valuable to the mainstream user.  This is why the overall Comscore Twitter user numbers are different than Twitter's registered user numbers.  Most users are generally lazy and want things done for them.  That is why users browse and search Twitter data.  Active Twitter users are "proxies" for lazy mainstream users which is pretty much everyone.

Mainstream people are trying to figure out the value of Twitter.  Twitter's value is in the resulting data from interactions of these early adopters or "proxies" that drive "action" within distinct user groups.  Action is the result of the engagement data or interaction data among users.  These results cause users to take an action on something.  Action meaning avoid, ignore, comment, retweet, buy, sell, share, and/or some other thing that is important for the user.  Although Twitter is noisy, there is big time signal in those tweets.

Twitter rewards real time interaction and curation which translates into discovery which tranlates into loyalty.  So even though not everyone tweets everyone can benefit from the select that are tweeting.  The 80/20 rule applies.  This is a marketplace developing and it's untapped.

Twitter Is One Big Ant Colony

The classic saying goes an ant by itself is weak but a colony of ants can do great things.  I've always said Twitter is like one "big ant colony" - in that there is lots of signaling (among ants).  By themselves the signals (tweets) look noisy and irrelevant, but when taking those tweets in context to a distinct user group (ant colony) in aggregation these self formed groups can move mountains from changing government and helping earthquake victims to unearthing bad products and services.

This new class of user is disrupting the marketplace.

This is an opportunity for brands and services to target this new class of user can achieve new market share and positions.  It's social media.  Harnessing the signal from the noise is one of the biggest opportunities on the web today.  This translates to social networks, cloud, and mobile.  Its about the users, interactions, and action.

I've blogged recently out my mobile innovation cycle and that same model applies here with social data.  It's about the interaction data and what that enables.

Bottom Line: With the always on connected Internet early adopters and influential users have more power than ever before.  What’s even more exciting is that the notion of influence is changing.  The Internet, social networks, Twitter, Facebook, and social media have globalized and opened up influence to the masses.

Twitter Data Suggests A New Class Of Web User – 80/20 Rule Applies is a post from: SiliconANGLE
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]]> http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/12/twitter-data-suggests-a-new-class-of-web-user-8020-rule-applies/feed/ 35 Starting this Friday: The Cube, Broadcasting Live from Austin [SxSWi] http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/11/starting-this-friday-the-cube-broadcasting-live-from-austin-sxswi/ http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/11/starting-this-friday-the-cube-broadcasting-live-from-austin-sxswi/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:58:32 +0000 Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins http://siliconangle.com/?p=13972

Starting this Friday: The Cube, Broadcasting Live from Austin [SxSWi] is a post from: SiliconANGLE
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]]> image In case you haven’t heard, there’s a little gathering of geeks taking place in my home state, starting this week, called South by Southwest. Naturally I’ll be down there attempting to bring relevance from the chaos which generally is that event. I’ll be assisted by Michael Sean Wright, Robert Scoble, Leo Laporte and a cast of dozens. You’ll be able to find my primary coverage here at SiliconANGLE, but also showing up on the TWiT Network, The Inquisitr, Nicefishfilms, Rizzn.com, and elsewhere.

In the mornings, I’ll be roaming the halls of the convention center hunting down interviews, and in the afternoons, Michael and I will be anchoring a few hours of live coverage from the Texas Coworking Studios, followed by Leo’s regularly scheduled programming on the TWiT network. Non-live coverage will show up all over the place, so keep an eye out for it.

John Furrier, of course, will be keeping an eye on the place here, and will be assisted by recently deputized co-editors of the site Art Lindsey and Ramine Darabiha. A thousand thanks for them stepping up to the plate during what will definitely be a hectic time, since both of them have day jobs (Ramine is a founder of MySites, and Art Lindsey is New Media consultant at DC-based Arts and Labs).

Keep your eyes turned here to get more details later this week regarding our coverage plans, and special round of thanks to the sponsors making this happen: Texas Coworking, NewTek, Rackspace and Powered.

More on What We’re Doing in Austin

As thousands of tech leaders gather in Austin for SXSWi, SiliconANGLE and nicefishfilms present a week of provocative and insightful programming live from 6th. Street. Beginning Friday, March, 12th through Wednesday, March, 17 the thought leaders in emerging technology will gather to discuss the breaking news and developments in film, music, video and geo-location advancements. The live production will be based at Texas Coworking located in the heart of downtown. 

Last year in Austin, Michael Sean Wright and I focused in our marathon live broadcast on what could be, based on the interesting thought development and discussion around the festival. Even before the show starts, it's clear that this year focuses on the convergence of what is. Between the cloud, mobile computing and the mainstreaming of social media what's possible now wasn't affordable last year, wasn't feasible the year before, and wasn't dream-able in the years proceeding.

Michael Sean Wright I will be anchoring the live broadcasts each day recapping the festivals activities with savvy analysis and poignant discussions from the industry's thought leaders as well as the movers and shakers. You’ll be able to tune into the broadcasts here on SiliconANGLE, we’ll be featuring them prominently. Our studio, which we’re calling “The Cube,” will also play host for Leo Laporte and the TWit Network for This Week in Google and This Week in Tech.

Joining the live broadcasts are a cast of characters you probably know most of already: Robert Scoble, Nova Spivak, Leo Laporte, SXSW Accelerator Producer Chris Valentine, Siri CEO Dag Kittlaus, SuperGlued CEO Rush Doshi, Josseph Jaffe (Chief Interuptor at Powered and author of Flip the Funnel), and many others.

Are you an SA member who’s going to be in Austin this week? Join our SA group so we can all be in touch.

Want to watch the magic happen? Sign up to get a ticket in to the live broadcasts!

Starting this Friday: The Cube, Broadcasting Live from Austin [SxSWi] is a post from: SiliconANGLE
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]]> http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/11/starting-this-friday-the-cube-broadcasting-live-from-austin-sxswi/feed/ 18 Open Identity Exchange Launch [Social Web TV] http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/11/open-identity-exchange-launch-social-web-tv/ http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/11/open-identity-exchange-launch-social-web-tv/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:49:56 +0000 John McCrea, David Recordon, and Joseph Smarr http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/11/open-identity-exchange-launch-social-web-tv/

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]]> John McCrea and Chris Messina are joined by special guests — Don Thibeau of the OpenID Foundation and Drummond Reed of the Information Card Foundation — to discuss the launch of the Open Identity Exchange, the result of a year-long collaboration between the two foundations. Watch HiRes.

Links related to this episode

PC World's coverage of the announcement: Open Identity Exchange backs U.S. gov't privacy guidelines

From the Financial Times blog: One step closer to a single sign-on for the web

The official press release from the Open Identity Exchange: Open Identity Exchange Launches at RSA

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2 Comments

    SiliconANGLE says:
    March 11, 2010 11:49 am

    SA>: Open Identity Exchange Launch [Social Web TV] http://j.mp/d26JJU

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter


    Reply
    John Sullivan@The Blog No One Reads says:
    March 11, 2010 12:49 pm
    I wish I was better looking and didn't still have a Brooklyn accent because surely Live Video exchanges are the next fad to come on :) Any blogger that isn't spending a good portion of their time practicing LIVE SKILLS and faster communication is TOAST :) Best wishes to all you Gentleman very interesting
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]]> http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/11/open-identity-exchange-launch-social-web-tv/feed/ 2 Crowdsourcing and the Design Community http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/11/crowdsourcing-and-the-design-community/ http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/11/crowdsourcing-and-the-design-community/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:36:03 +0000 Hutch Carpenter http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/03/11/crowdsourcing-and-the-design-community/

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]]> This is an issue that I simply cannot wrap my head around. Spec work appears in the design field infinitely more times than any other industry. It absolutely floors me that people think that it is even remotely ethical to build their businesses by tearing down ours.

Mark Hemmis’s comment on AIGA policy statement on spec work

The past couple years have seen an increase in the use of crowdsourcing by companies to procure design assets. It works like this:

  • Requesting organization posts a request for submissions to a design crowdsourcing site (e.g. 99designs,crowdSPRING, MycroBurst, etc.)
  • Interested designers review the request, and create their entry
  • They submit their entry to the site
  • Requesting organization selects its favorite, pays the winning designer the announced fee

These design requests are often for logos, but for a number of other types of initiatives as well. For example, 99designs’ list of requests (to the right) gives some sense of the types of projects.

So far, so good, right? Well, a lot of designers think not. As Mark Hemmis’s comment above shows, these open spec work contests have been raising the ire of the designer community.

Is crowdsourcing ripping their industry asunder?

Designers’ Beefs with Crowdsourcing

Three aspects of crowdsourcing design raise concern for many in the design industry:

  1. Lack of compensation for designers whose entries are not selected
  2. Diminishes the design profession
  3. Not sustainable in the long term

Compensation: To be competitive, individuals will need to invest some time in designing a submission for a company. With a good number of entries, this equates to a decent number of hours invested. As Pamela Pfiffnerwrites:

The problem is, spec and crowdsourcing can lower your value and hourly rates so far that minimum wage looks like a fat paycheck.

Her statement takes things to a logical extreme – someone would have to do nothing but spend their time entering contests. But she does a good job framing the issue.

Diminishing the profession: The issue with crowdsourcing is that it says, “this stuff is easy!” A commenter on this post, How NOT to Design a Logo, baldly gives this concern legitimacy:

Logo design contests are great, its the only way I go. I get my pick of 5-10 designs for less then $20. Designers these days are a dime a dozen, be happy you get the work.

The design industry has characteristics of being craftsman, as well as strategists. At least the higher end firms do. Sentiments like that are grating.

Not sustainable: The concern here is that over the long term, the economics of crowdsourcing will cause existing designers to exit the industry, and potential designers will opt for different careers. Here’s how Jacob Cass thinks about it:

Design contest sites are not the future of graphic design… nor do I see a time when it ever will be, however, in the long term I believe spec work is going to be detrimental to the design industry… both devaluing design and designers as a whole.

The argument here is that rather than expand the pool of talent for design, crowdsourcing will ultimately reducethe industry.

So designers themselves are lining up against these types of crowdsourcing design contests. Which begs the question…

Why Are Crowdsourcing Design Contests Growing?

I saw this comment from Jason Aiken of 99designs (March 1, 2010):

Truth is – 99designs is growing by leaps and bounds. We have record numbers of projects being launched and have needed to hire new staff to help us keep up with the growth.

The motivation of organizations seeking design work seem clear enough – tap a large network of creativity, manage expenses within budget. But what are those designers doing there?

It seems that not all designers are of the same mind about these crowdsourcing design contests. Some actually embrace them. Why?

Build your portfolio: Not all designers in the world have 10 years experience and a roster of paying clients. For those starting out in the business, the competitions provide great fuel for creating designs. If you want prospective clients to see what you’re capable of, the design competitions seem to offer a chance to create that portfolio. Benefits:

  • You need to think not abstractly about design principles, but concretely about how a design project relates to a business
  • Competitions are great for elevating one’s focus and creativity
  • You can benchmark yourself against other submissions, including those selected if yours is not

Personal interest: Some projects just pique the interest of a person. Maybe there’s a day job with a paying company, and then a chance at night to do things “your way” on a project of interest. The project taps some areas you want to pursue, or maybe allows you to try something out without concern as to whether the client will ultimately want the design.

Extra business: Everyone is hustling in a weak economy. If your design business has some slack in demand, why not apply the available creative resources toward an occasional crowdsourcing project? If you’re a professional shop, presumably your odds are better than most.

Access to high-end ad agencies: This was the case when Porter Crispin + Bogusky solicited logo designs for their start-up client Brammo, maker of electric motorcycles. They ran the contest through crowdSPRING. The contest sparked plenty of debate, but also saw 700 entries. One reason was that young up-n-coming designers wanted the chance to impress a firm of the caliber of PC+B, who can send many paying clients their way.

That’s the designer participation set of motivations. I guess the best way to think about companies’ motivation is this:

Do they get results?

Since the number of requests from companies is growing, design crowdsourcing sites are working at some level. If they weren’t, word would spread pretty quickly and companies would stop using them. This comment from designer  Morgan Stone on Alex Bogusky’s blog post about PC+B’s use of crowdSPRING is illuminating:

As a designer… crowdsourcing scares me. I think it has to do with the harsh reality that sometimes it doesn’t take experience or a big title to design something truly amazing.

What’s the staying power of the crowdsourced design contest approach? And will it disrupt the industry, in the Clayton Christensen sense?

Sustainability and Reach of Crowdsourcing Design Contests

Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang wrote last year, “Without a doubt, Specwork (like crowdspring or 99 designers) is here to stay – economics will drive this forward.” For the buyers, yes. But the supply side of the equation – the designers – is that here to stay?

I believe it is. The numbers say it is. Here’s what I mean:

image

In a 2009 article, Forbes noted that there are 80,000 free lance designers in the U.S. alone. Add in the talent from around the world, and you can see that there is a large of pool of creativity. Maybe 200,000 designers globally? 99designs claims roughly 54,000 designers on its site.

Designers have some motivation to participate in crowdsourcing design contests, as noted for the reasons above. It’s not like every designer will submit regularly. But every project reaches some new set of designers, and occasionally gets a repeat one as well.

All it takes is for a business seeking design work is maybe 30, 40, 50 submissions? As a percent of the global number of designers, that’s not much.

40 / 200,000 = 0.02%

Here’s what one designer said about getting clients from crowdsourcing sites:

I’ve had direct clients and also have been one of those in the crowd. Surprisingly, some of my best clients are the ones that followed me from these crowd sourcing sites. That’s probably because they’ve already been through a working process with me, and they like what they’ve experienced, so there’s no mismatch of expectations like a new client.

I do see the sustainability of the business. It’s complex, but there are enough people who do see advantages to participating. Even if only for certain periods of their lives or only on occasion. I don’t see entering crowdsourcing design contests as a full-time pursuit for someone.

Next question: how much can crowdsourcing chip away at the traditional areas of the design industry? There’s a gap that crowdsourcing addresses (Erica’s post, Bokardo’s post):

image

Many designers in the debate note the importance of establishing a rapport with clients, and understanding their clients more deeply than a set of colors and fonts. A firm such as Nocturnal Graphic Design Studio appears to deliver value through deeper relationships and more strategic approaches with its clients.

But Erica’s point above is well-taken. Sometimes, you’re not in the market for that level of involvement. Small and mid-sized businesses do not need the full horsepower of high-end design firms. As one designer (snootily) commented on the PC+B blog post about using crowdSPRING:

99 designs and their nefarious brethren have a client roster whose market recognition for the most part is similar to that of “joe’s morgue & jerky outlet.”

Of course, this may not be contained to SMBs.

The Disruptive Potential

Have you checked out what Mountain Dew is doing with crowdsourcing (aka “DEWmocracy”)? As Wired notes in a January article:

Mountain Dew is asking consumers to choose three new sodas, from selecting the flavors to naming them, designing the cans and choosing the ad agency to promoting the product.

Not all of this is crowdsourcing design, but it is an edgy experiment in leaving the professional firms behind.

Right now, as Steve Douglas of the Logo Factory notes, the biggest chunk of business is for logos. Which you can see at the start of this post in the 99designs project list.

The U.S. Census Bureau had the graphic design industry generating $2.8 billion in revenue in 2002. It is a large, diverse, complex industry. My expectation is that design contest crowdsourcing will encroach more into large enterprises for tactical projects, as the smaller businesses continue to use them and get good results. Large companies’ efforts, such Mountain Dew’s DEWmocracy, Unilever’s crowdsourcing contest for a TV campaign for its Peperami snack food, and Doritos’ crowdsourced Super Bowl ads, add fuel to this.

Two things are needed for the crowdsourcing model to encroach further into the design industry:

  • Leaderboards/reputation
  • Smartsourcing

Leaderboards let prospective buyers know who the best are. We see them on Topcoder for programming contests. It’s a way to establish visibility and credibility far beyond the recommendations you maintain on your own site. It will take some changes by the crowdsourcing sites, enabling recognition for designers who do well in contests, even if they are not picked. It also would need to have different bases for identifying top designers.

The other wrinkle is to allow a form of smartsourcing. Once the top designers are identified, they are invited for larger companies’ design projects. This is pretty similar to the current state of things, except the basis for access changes somewhat. It’s not just business relationships a designer/firm has established with the big ad/marketing.brand agencies. It’s based on performance.

With these two elements, I can see how crowdsourcing becomes more important, more disruptive, in the world of business design.

[Editor’s note: Hutch crossposted this on his personal blog. –mrh]

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2 Comments

    rizzn says:
    March 11, 2010 10:53 am

    SA> Crowdsourcing and the Design Community http://dlvr.it/9vK2

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter


    Reply
    Zooppa crowdsourcing platform says:
    March 11, 2010 11:37 am
    Great article Hutch - you've really laid out both sides of the conversation and I like how you maintain a biased perspective. Zooppa.com is a platform for brands to crowdsource creative advertising ideas and content from our growing community of nearly 60,000 video producers, designers, animators and so on - so this is very relevant to what we do and a conversation we've had with prospective community members on an ongoing basis. I think Jeremiah Owyang's point that economic forces are driving the crowdsourcing movement is extremely important to note, and your four reasons for participation are spot on. Great post!
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