Back from the break .. Its a new world

Havnt posted in a while and its not been that long really .. well maybe in blog terms its been eons (2months) and oh boy has the world changed in these two months. First we had the financial meltdown, marquee names like Lehman vanished, Barrack Obama was elected president, gas is back down to under $3 a gal, folks like you and me are wondering where all of this is going. Sure the world has changed from just 2 months ago.

Well a couple of things have changed on the professional front as well, after close to 10 years I've left the mother ship at Oracle/Siebel and ventured into a very exciting gig at a smaller but high growth, high potential company - NetSuite. Its a phenomenal place with very bright people and a very powerful product. In the new role I'm responsible for CRM product management at NetSuite.

There are a number of things already queued up that I want to blog about in the areas of CRM, NetSuite, Product Management, Scrum/Agile and personal experiences (like my really crappy experience buy a 3G iPhone).

So this blog is to get started from the break and start writing again.

What's under the Shiny Chrome?

Google's launched their latest we're not trying to go after MSFT product called "Chrome". Here's their description of the product ..

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

Now that I've installed and used the product a little bit, here are 3 things on the top of my mind.

1. Its not compelling enough (yet) to make me switch from FF.
2. The current EULA will make it next to impossible for use in a compliant enterprise.
3. Does this mean web coders will now have yet another fork in their code saying "If Chrome .. do this ... else".

Update:
Haha .. I find it ironic that when I accessed my Hotmail account from Chrome I got this message.

We recommend that you upgrade your web browser so you can get the most out of Windows Live Hotmail. Upgrading should only take a few minutes. To get started, choose one of the browsers below:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Mozilla Firefox
• Apple Safari

Not sure if its just a caching issue or what but it sure is ironic.

Userplane says BB's are still alive and kickin in the 2.0 world

BBS I would say is the grandfather of most social media applications of today .. much before FB or LN or Geocities or IM or IRC there were bulletin board systems (phew suddenly I feel old). Anyone could start them (well initially only a few privileged admins hosting them on their servers could conrol them ... but it changed over time), people could join them, there were conversations and threads, later came the presence and rankings as well.

So today when I saw that :) userplane is taking the good ol BB's or forums to a whole next level with Flex/Flash it intrigued me. What place would they have in todays microblogging, wiki world.

Well to me, Twitter of today is somewhat the forums + email alerts that I used to receive in the past. I would follow forums, folks would follow my forums we would have conversations and short bursts as posts (maybe not exactly 140 characters .. but short enough).

I think userplane is on to something exciting, by combining their latest beefed up forums with IM and other products theyre feeding a market that is currently reaching a instant fatigue. To me forums always represented the balance between realtime and archived.

Enterprise Social Media in Action

Recently came across this interesting post that lists 35+ examples of corporate social media in action.

While there are many interesting examples about things like blogs, forums, Twitter and Facebook being used in the corporate world, the one that intrigued me the most was the one from HSBC.

"HSBC built the HSBC Business Network to connect entrepreneurs using blogs, videos and forums."
Most-Networked-Executives

National Geographic has the most innovative one where they are using Google Lively.

National Geographic uses Google’s new virtual world, Lively, to bring people together around its new show, LA Hard Hats.

A quick analysis indicates that 25+ of the 35 example enterprises are into blogging in a big way with community building and Twitter second and third. While there were some mentions of videos and Facebook and others the vast majority were using blogs as their main social media vehicle.

Maybe cause blogs are the easiest to get off the ground, have a conversation (if you allow comments) and keep fresh.

Another one that I'd like to add to the list is Oracle Mix, its a community building or social tool that allows customers to connect, share ideas and have a conversation with Oracle.

Hey SaaS where's my backup generator

Backup generators is one thing that surely comes to mind going through the latest round of SaaS and SaaS platform related access problems this time with Google Apps.

Google Apps Hit by Prolonged Gmail Access Problem
Amazon Down For An Hour And Counting (Updated)
Amazon Web Services Goes Down, Takes Many Startup Sites With It
Downed Salesforce systems slow Europe and US

With all the talk these days about cloud computing and how everything needs to be moved into the sky (err sorry cloud) I wonder where it would leave enterprises with large scale outages. Maybe that's where the hybrid - fail over model of SaaS with OnPremise replication plays a strategic role. Now one can argue that the cost might be prohibitive for smaller organizations and it would involve a number of factors like criticality of application * duration of outage * impact to business etc.

The most common real world analogy that I've seen repeated over and over again from SaaS offerrings is about the utility model and how everyone today gets their power from a single vendor who works on all the infrastructure, operations and issues. While we the consumer provide a per unit usage fee and forget about the rest. Would you run something critical like a general hospital by solely relying on the power grid? Why hospitals, these days it comes down to very small retail organizations as well who have their own battery or diesel powered backup devices to withstand outages and keep business running.

Well here are some of my observations around the power grid and SaaS analogy and maybe its a black box of opportunities for a number of vendors who might not currently be in the SaaS platform provider race.

- If we look at the maturity curve of the power industry, SaaS is a long way from it.
- While there might be one front face vendor for an area ( like a PG&E) there are a number of up and down stream vendors who make the entire delivery happen.
- There will be a lot of mergers and consolidations in the SaaS space if the power industry is any indicator.
- The likelihood of a large number of ancillary offerings coming up around the space that offer backup products and backup strategies is high. Its akin to the diesel generator industry.
- As consolidation will occur and single vendors per geo's or verticals will appear it will spawn a whole an entire industry segment of vendors manufacturing devices that feed from the power lines like the electric devices of today.

Though its a little unclear who will be the electric company vs the backup generators vs the device manufacturers (the Westinghouses, GE's of todays world). One thing is certain that if SaaS/SaaS Platform is to be successful in large enterprises there will have to be backup generators ... most likely onsite near to the delivery end point ... it will have to keep storing information or juice enough to make it a swift and viable backup in case of large scale disruptions or outages.

Oracle's Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0 destination

Just saw the Oracle sales.com site.It rocks!!

Also see that the Oracle Sales Prospector product is now live.

Finally there is a SFA product that actually increases productivity and effectiveness for the sales person than giving them yet another data entry tool. Thats been my one big gripe with all the SaaS SFA products out there today that claim to be the next generation of CRM products. I think they should actually be labelled next generation network based products. Cause they didnt do much for CRM/SFA but rather leveraged the internet to deliver the same data entry screens.

There's more coming from Oracle in the form of Sales Library, Campaigns and much more. Stay tuned for more on the new Social CRM Apps.

The Oracle Lounge on Google Lively

Google launched its take on virtual worlds today called Lively. I think its a good offering in a very amazing space. This is going to be the future of chat, interaction, dating, service resolution ... you name it on the web in a few years.
Though I was a little disappointed with the product. Knowing that this is from Google, it didnt really blow my mind away or anything. They need to step it up on this one.

I'm hanging out at "The Oracle Lounge". Come check it out.

Updated RSS Experiment

DONTCLICK.IT - An amazing experiment in User Interactivity

Recently saw this interesting site called DONTCLICK.IT that challenges the user to navigate without using the mouse click. Its rendered through Flash and is probably a great example of how creative and versatile one can get with Adobe Flash/Flex/AIR and keep the user engaged.

I'm not sure how well this kind of a site would perform in the enterprise with Accessibility/508 Compliance kind of scenarios. But definitely had me hooked.

Pretty cool video take on Billy Joels "We didnt start the fire" and the next wave (bubble maybe)

Saw this interesting video posted on Vinnie M's blog and thought I'd post it here.
For some strange reason this brought a large grin on my face ;-). Still trying to interpret my emotions and why the grin.

Enterprise 2.0 a pragmatic view of the world

There is a an interesting Enterprise2.0 related post by Dennis Howlett this morning about his conversation with Charles Phillips, President Oracle Corp.

Its pretty much a given now that enterprises do want to use solutions that incorporate Web 2.0 technology, products and application development paradigms. One of the main logjams being around security. Its not that these products/solutions cannot be secured, they can be secured in the same way/extent as any other application. Its just that providing the same level of security on these kinds of apps as any other enterprise app leads to the E2.0 app either losing some of its delight/stickiness/usability.

Collaboration in the enterprise has always been a big thing and there have been multiple revs of solutions trying to solve that requirement. E2.0 solutions might have a leg up in this area because with even notifications, feeds, blogs, cloud based applications and storage, self-regulating mechanisms like wikis, collaboration is woven into the fabric of most W2.0 solutions.

As always there is still a lot of education that will need to be done around the E2.0 area before CXO's are comfortable signing off large checks for solutions of this kind.

Click here to read the complete article

Oracle shows off Web 2.0 mashup @JavaOne

Click here to view a pretty cool demo of an Enterprise 2.0 mashup using Oracle technology. Its got tag based search, instant collaboration, viewing employee networks and some other goodies all applied to a rather mundane Order Management task.
Wonder why Oracle does not show more of its technology in these kinds of demo's. Its much better than the "Let me show you how to build this using my fav development tool" kind of demos that they've been doing for some time now.